Actress Deena Payne has revealed that she was disappointed by her on-screen exit from 'Emmerdale'.
Her character Viv Hope was killed off last night as the fire started by Nick Henshall (Michael McKell) spread through the village. She died alongside Terry (Billy Hartman) who was attempting to rescue her from the flat above the shop.
Payne believes that her final episodes were "an anti-climax" after 18 years of playing the character on the soap.
She told The Mirror: "I was very disappointed with my departure. And I think the viewers will be, too. Having followed Viv for so long and travelled with her on her ups and downs, I think they'd want a better build-up so they could really get into it and give her a good send-off.
"I was promised a big storyline. Instead it's probably the easiest exit in soap history because I didn't have to act at all. I wasn't even involved in the dramatic rescue scenes.
"Over my three last episodes I had one scene in each, with the house burning down without Viv knowing it - and that was my storyline."
The actress was also upset that she had no lines in her final two episodes.
She told the newspaper: "I had to do nothing, which was a shame. It's a bit of an anti-climax after being told that you're going to have one of the biggest storylines that soap has ever seen, but for my character it wasn't at all. The big storyline is the fire and how people get everyone out. And quietly, behind the scenes, Viv just gets burned to death. Without saying a word. The easiest acting I've done in 18 years!"
Payne suggested a better way her character could have left the show: "If they had to kill me off, they could at least have given me a nice funeral befitting Viv, instead of being shunted out of the Dales. You can't be in a soap forever. But I feel let down by the way Viv's been written out.
"Viv was a strong character, central to village life in the post office, and it's a shame she's not being buried next to her ex-husband Vic in the graveyard and doesn't even have a headstone there."
She added: "It would have been nice, too, to have seen Donna, Scott and Kelly, Viv's kids and stepdaughter, just to have got a little bit of the past back into the now. They're losing the history of the village."
