Katherine Dow Blyton, 59, said she was left in tears after ITV bosses told her that her Emmerdale character Harriet would die and added that leaving the soap was ‘a shock’ for her

A former Emmerdale actress revealed she burst into tears after being told that her character would die and she would be axed from the soap.

Katherine Dow Blyton, who played Harriet Finch on the ITV soap until her character’s shock death in Super Soap Week, reflected on the conversation she had with bosses who told her: “We love Harriet and we’re going to give her a good death.” The 59-year-old said she “burst into tears” when she learned she was leaving, but felt it was right in the end.

She added: “I tried to get out of the building, sat in my car and burst into tears because it was a shock. I had been ready to go for a while, to be fair, but to make the decision to leave a good job is a big decision and I’m glad they made it because I wouldn’t have been brave enough.”

Harriet Finch rides across the countryside on a quad bike looking for Amelia in Emmerdale

The star made the comments on the Soap From The Box podcast and said she received “many lovely messages” after Harriet died. She said: “People going she hasn’t even had a funeral, where’s her body? I just felt a bit sorry for Harriet, it is what it is. You have to suck it up and go, that’s showbiz!”

She also questioned why the focus of soaps is often on “conflict, murder and affairs” and less on characters as before, saying: “I think the problem is everything seems to be very sensational now, when you watch the old episodes, it was very much character-based. You just think why has everything got to be conflict, murder, affairs?” She added: “You can have a character that’s single or a happily married couple.

“I don’t know whether soaps are a victim of their own success because there is a limit, when you’re doing six episodes a week, what do you do to keep people interested? It just seems more of a competition between soaps to do the best stunts and the best trauma and tragedies rather than characters.”

Katherine previously admitted it was “emotional” reading her final scenes. Asked what it was like filming her death scenes, she said: “I got very emotional reading it. On the actual day I was covered in blood and I had various bits of woodland hanging out of my hair. We had these industrial wind machines which were literally blowing sand and debris into your eyes.

“So when it came to it, it wasn’t as emotional because the technicality of what you have to do takes away from the emotion so I managed to get through the day without sobbing. The death wasn’t my last scene though but on my last day I received flowers and lovely gifts and messages. I don’t think it will hit me that I’m not going back for a couple of weeks because it feels like I’m on a break but it will slowly hit me.”

Since her departure from Emmerdale, the actress is now playing boxing trainer Brendan Ingle’s wife Alma in a new biopic of Prince Naseem Hamed called Giant. Pierce Brosnan plays Ingle and has also been seen on set in Yorkshire looking unrecognisable in a grey wig and vintage clothes. The biopic is currently in production and doesn’t yet have a release date.