Emmerdale meets Breaking Bad plot revealed as Joe Absolom to make dramatic entrance

Joe Absolom swaps the Queen Vic for the Woolpack next week in his dramatic entrance on Emmerdale as a drug dealer, 25 years after he was last seen propping up the bar in EastEnders.

Joe will burst into the Dales on Tuesday in a massive storyline he has dubbed “Emmerdale Breaking Bad”. Referring to the hit US crime drama, the dad of three roars with laughter as he admits his children finally think he has landed an impressive role.

He says: “They are in the very ‘not bothered’ category when it comes to me being an actor. I don’t really tell them what I am doing – it’s more ‘have you done your homework?, don’t forget your PE kit’.

“But my son wants to be an actor too, and I have talked to him about this new role. I guess it does sound cool, ‘Oh, I am playing a drug dealer’ to a 14-year-old boy. They are like ‘wow dad, at last you are playing someone proper’.”

Emmerdale fans will watch Joe’s character Ray claiming to be an old “associate” of Mack, who wants to sell some farm machinery.

But it soon becomes clear Ray is more interested in the crops – or drugs – Mack is growing in the fields, than he is in tractors.

Quickly realising the drugs’ value, he makes Mack an offer he can’t refuse, then recruits April and Dylan to drop the drugs off for him.

In his first newspaper interview ahead of his big soap return, Joe says: “It’s so exciting to be a part of such a meaty plotline like this. With drugs involved, it’s like Emmerdale Breaking Bad! And it’s great to be playing someone who will definitely be ruffling a few feathers.”

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Scared and excited to be joining the Yorkshire drama, since his last soap role in EastEnders Joe’s career has been varied - including roles as Al Large in Doc Martin, Andy Warren in The Bay, and most recently as criminal Braden in the critically acclaimed Code is Silence, alongside Strictly’s Rose Ayling-Ellis.

“It is genuinely terrifying joining anything like this,” he says, of Emmerdale. “It’s very rare for me to join anything that is so well established and I was nervous on my first day.

“Something like Code of Silence, which I have just worked on for ITV, you turn up on day one and it’s new to everybody. Here, people have obviously been working together for years. But, thankfully, as soon as I arrived in the Green Room, everyone said ‘Hi mate, nice to meet you’ and that instantly relaxed me.

“I’m a few weeks in now, but I am really enjoying it. This isn’t work! To play someone like Ray is so much fun.”

The role also represents an element of job security, which in an insecure profession like acting is a godsend.

Now a proud dad to Lyla, 18, Casper, 14 and Daisy, 12, that fear over whether the roles will dry up is never far away.

“As a jobbing actor, you bounce from job to job and keep your fingers crossed, because you aren’t really sure what is going to happen,” he explains. “You finish a job and think ‘I will never work again’ - in fact you think that every morning when you wake up! At school, they asked the children what their dads did. One kid stood up and said ‘a doctor,’ another ’a farmer ‘and my Daisy said: ‘my dad takes out all the bins!’

“That’s because I am not a useful guy with tools in a van - I disappear and then I come back.”

Modest and good-natured, Joe says being the best dad he can be by providing for his kids is now his driving force.

He explains: “When I did EastEnders, I was living with my mum and dad, I got the train and went out with my mates. I remember people had mortgages and now I am at the same stage! I am 46, I have three children and things to pay for. What’s nice about this Emmerdale role is you can shut the worry voices up and go ‘it’s ok, I am going to Leeds to film on Wednesday”.

The role also comes at a sad time for Joe, as he navigates divorce from his kids’ mum, Liz Brown.

The couple met in 2002 and got married 17 years later in 2019.

After a terrifying burglary at their South London home, they upped sticks and moved to Cornwall in 2013, where the family still live.

“We have split up,” he says. “We are getting a divorce. It’s working for everyone, it’s a little give and take.”

Reluctant to discuss any more about the split, he does make it clear that joining Emmerdale has been a true tonic at a difficult time.

Even the seven-hour door to door commute from his Cornish home to Leeds doesn’t bother him.

He jokes: “It’s nice to sit on a train and watch some TV – just like everyone else. I know some people talk about switching off from work, but I never switch off. I really enjoy what I do.”

According to Joe, his character Ray will be manipulative and conniving from the outset - going to any lengths to get exactly what he wants.

He says: “Ray turns up under the guise of running a business that supplies four farms, but then quite quickly, he realises he wants the farms to supply to him.

“Mack and Lewis are using their green fingers in a way to grow certain crops (drugs) which are maybe not as legal as others, should we say. It’s a high grade and Ray is interested in establishing a constant supply from these green fingered wonders.”

And smooth talking Ray soon has Mack and Lewis doing exactly what he wants.

“There will be a sense that Ray’s part of a bigger picture,” says Joe. “The danger is we don’t know which part of the cog he is - a trigger puller ,or the person making the tea.”

Like any big Emmerdale storyline, it will, promises Joe, get even darker.

“Ray will be praying on the weaker side of the village,” he reveals. “Ray quickly realises there is youth - in April and Dylan. If you show cash in return for taking a rucksack to the park, it’s very attractive.”

Emmerdale fans will be delighted to hear the actor has signed up for the foreseeable future. Joe is currently staying at a hotel in Leeds when he is filming.

“I love a new city,” he enthuses. “Everyone here has their own lives and so, you can’t say ‘hey let’s set up a What’s app group’. They would be like ‘we did that ten years ago!’ But I am a bit of a lone wolf anyway and I am fine with my life just going to Nando’s on a table for one!”

Humble and extremely likeable, looking back on the last 25 years and the great roles he has landed, Joe says: “I feel surprised and I sometimes feel I can’t believe I am 46 and still working on something.

“All the dramas I’ve worked on I’ve enjoyed. Code of Silence, more recently, was very enjoyable. I really wanted my character, Braden, to shoot himself at the end!”

Fame, he says, has never been something he has courted. "When I was in EastEnders, I wasn’t a celebrity, I turned up and did the work,” he says.

“Now I like looking after my kids. I don’t need anything else.”

Clearly excited about his new soap role, he hints about just how bad Ray will become.

“We don’t know quite how bad Ray is, but if things aren’t delivered, then there will be repercussions for everyone in the local area,” he says. “If a rucksack with drugs gets lost, there are always going to be problems. We may see a different side of Ray when that happens.”