Emmerdale star Beth Cordingly has opened up about Ruby’s upcoming storyline as the character’s sinister father Anthony holds the secret of her dalliance with Cain Dingle over her

It’s been a rough start to 2025 for Emmerdale’s Ruby Fox-Miligan – and with her sinister father Anthony in town, it’s only set to become worse for the character. After the harrowing revelation that Anthony sexually abused Ruby as a child, we see her send off a DNA test to discover the truth about her daughter Steph’s paternity. But with her relationships with husband Caleb and 30-something Steph at risk, and her father maliciously meddling, Ruby agonises over whether to open the results.

“She wants to know that her greatest fear isn’t true – that Steph is not her dad’s,” actress Beth Cordingly says. “She wants that reassurance so she can move on. But she’s always had the fear, from the minute she got pregnant, that the baby may not be Caleb’s. She didn’t deceive him, she just desperately wanted it to be his.”

Emmerdale’s Beth Cordingly has teased that Ruby’s affair with Cain is a ‘ticking time bomb’

For Beth, 48, it’s a relief to share Ruby’s story with viewers after her villainous first year. Since joining the ITV soap in January last year, Ruby has vengefully run over Ethan Anderson, plotted to take down Kim Tate and cheated on Caleb with his half-brother Cain.

“It’s lovely that the audience is now in on her story and able to go on the journey with her,” she says. “I feel the audience will now understand her behaviour more. It’s a massive privilege to do a storyline like that, and we all really hope we’re getting it right.”

Ruby ultimately chooses to destroy the DNA results after seeing how Caleb and Steph are repairing their relationship. But in a cruel twist, Caleb finds the results before Ruby can get rid of them. “She’s like a deer in the headlights in that moment,” Beth says. “He is staring at her, and until he says what the results are, she has no idea herself. It’s like an unexploded bomb he’s holding.

“I remember exactly the feeling when I was standing there looking at him, thinking, there’s so much going on. All it says in the results is whether Caleb is the father or not. It doesn’t say who the father is.”

On top of all that, Ruby also has to worry about her despicable father, played by Nicholas Day, after her night of passion with Cain. “He is taunting her and making life difficult,” Beth says. “It’s a suppressive environment.

Beth Cordingly feels “very passionately” about Ruby’s abuse storyline

“He thinks he’s worked out about her and Cain and he’s holding that over her, so she’s really struggling – and obviously [because of] the fact that she feels she can’t tell anyone about the abuse, no one understands why she’s behaving the way she is.”

Despite tackling the delicate topic of abuse, Beth didn’t feel daunted by the powerful storyline. “It’s a subject that I feel, as many people do, very passionately about,” she says. “I’ve worked in the past with Childline and the NSPCC, so it’s a subject that I wasn’t nervous about taking on.

“It was more that you just really want to make sure that if you’re telling something like that, you’re telling it right. If it helps one person or can help one person feel validated, or admit ‘this happened to me’, then that would be a really amazing thing.”

As for what’s to come, Beth warns of tear-jerking scenes ahead. “It’s going to be emotional. Caleb means everything to her, as do her children. She doesn’t want to lose Steph again, she’s trying really hard to put on a brave face, for both of them. But every time she’s in a room with her dad, she finds it extremely difficult.”

Viewers will see new discoveries and twists on Emmerdale (Image: ITV)

If Anthony is Steph’s father, Ruby will hesitate before revealing all to Caleb. “Her relationship with Caleb has a purity to it that she doesn’t want to taint with him knowing this horrific thing that has happened to her,” Beth explains.

“She feels a lot of shame and guilt and all those feelings that you would but shouldn’t feel in that situation. She doesn’t want him to see her as a victim. She’s decided to go to the grave with that secret. She doesn’t want anyone to ever know that there’s a chance that her dad has fathered her child, because it’s just too horrendous.”

Meanwhile, the secret of Cain and Ruby’s tryst is a “ticking time bomb” that will be revealed in due course, Beth says. “It’s just sitting there waiting and as soon as something’s going OK, it could just come out,” she smiles. “I think it’s good that it hasn’t come out yet but I’m sure it will.”

Emmerdale airs weekdays from 7pm on ITV1 and ITVX.