Emmerdale's Amy star Natalie Ann Jamieson's 'adoption plans' following shock death

Emmerdale star Natalie Ann Jamieson opens up to The Mirror's Notebook in an exclusive chat about her exit from the ITV soap, her future plans and why she's considering adoption

Emmerdale star Natalie Ann Jamieson left soap fans bereft with her devastating exit last month, when her character Amy Wyatt was killed off after six years on our screens. However, the 37-year-old Geordie actress couldn’t be giddier as she chats about what’s next for her – and how she may take a leaf out of Amy’s book when it comes to starting a family.

“The world ’s my oyster now, which is a nice situation to be in,” she says. “I think six years is the perfect amount of time to be in that lovely Emmerdale bubble. Now, to be back in the big wide world and to do anything, I’m really excited.”

Viewers watched as Amy lost her life in hospital after riding in a limousine that crashed into a frozen lake. As she fled for safety, she became trapped beneath the icy surface. In emotional scenes, Amy’s husband Matty (Ash Palmisciano) said his goodbyes – with the couple having just decided to adopt a child.

While Natalie herself isn’t quite ready to start a family with Ali Ward, her partner of 15 years, she says that she would be happy to go down the same route as Amy and Matty when the time comes.

“We don’t feel like putting pressure on ourselves that you have to go down a natural route,” says Natalie. “People get very worried about body clocks, but we know that all of those routes are available – just like they were for Amy and Matty.

“There are a lot of people where all they’ve ever wanted is to carry a child and to have a baby in their belly, but I don’t feel very strongly about that. It’s a nice position to be in.”

However, there are no thoughts about adoption just yet. “We don’t have any particular plans to do anything like that,” she says.

Not afraid to stray from tradition, Natalie admits that if she were to marry Ali – who runs a Pauline Quirke performing arts academy – she would happily elope.

“We’ve been together a long time but we just really like spending our money on holidays,” she says. “We’re not very traditional, we’re not into ceremonies and if we want to get married, we’ll probably just run off and do it somewhere. We’ll come back and say, ‘We’re married everyone! Let’s have a party!’

“People say, ‘It’s the best day of your life,’ and I’m sure it would be – but I also have a really good time on holiday.”

Natalie’s exit after six years on the soap proved emotional – especially as she was initially stunned when told that Amy would be killed off.

“They knew they had the stunt coming up so it worked out that this was going to be Amy’s exit and I didn’t know it was going to be a death at first,” she admits.

“It’s really hard. Would you prefer for your character to die if you’re going, or to go in the back of a taxi? If it’s a taxi, you could potentially go back. That’s the most comfortable way.”

But after an impressive stint as Amy, Natalie decided she was ready to say goodbye to the soap for good. “The show said, ‘We just think Amy’s too big of a character to go in a taxi. We want to give her something big,’” she adds.

“Once I got my head around the fact that getting this story is the better of those two options, then I was really excited to do it all.”

The star managed to keep her exit a secret from friends and family – although she did warn her mum about the traumatic scenes to come. “I said, ‘I don’t know if you should be watching this, it’s going to be a lot for you to watch,’” she laughs. “But lots of my family and friends had no idea. People kept asking me, ‘How’s everything at work?’ I was like, 'Yeah, it’s good!’ I could be a spy!”

As for what lies ahead for her, Natalie is back in the swing of auditioning again and fancies trying something completely different to her emotional soap scenes.

“I’d love to do some comedy, having just done something so heavy,” she laughs. “I would love to do some theatre.”

Having kept her Emmerdale departure a secret, Natalie feels there’s one reality show she would be a natural for – The Traitors ’ celebrity edition.

“I don’t want to float my own boat but I’m very good at The Traitors,” she says. “We’ve been playing it for years because it’s a drama game. We were on holiday with all of our friends one year in Lanzarote and Ali was coordinating the game for everyone.

“A couple of girls next to us said, ‘Excuse me – where did you hire him from?’ We were just drama geeks doing it for fun. We’re gutted we didn’t come up with the idea for The Traitors because we’d be drama geek millionaires.”

Strictly Come Dancing may be a no-go though. “I’d be fighting a losing battle because people are so good at dancing when they start on there and I’d be starting from scratch,” she says. “I’d have to do a little tester with them to see if I’d be OK. I wouldn’t be going in there confidently, whereas with I’m A Celeb I would be on an equal playing field.”

With more time on her hands, Natalie is hoping to learn British Sign Language – a topic she is deeply passionate about as someone with hearing issues herself.

“I’ve always been interested in learning sign language and I have bad hearing in one ear which I can use a hearing aid for,” she says. “I wouldn’t need to use BSL for myself but I like the idea of being able to interact with anybody who does need to. It’s a shame that BSL isn’t an option in school. I would definitely have chosen that.”

Natalie has made friends for life on Emmerdale – her co-stars Jonny McPherson (Dr Liam Cavanagh) and Olivia Bromley (Dawn Taylor) became emotional when she broke the news that she was leaving. “I told Liv and Jonny on the day I found out what the exit was going to be. We did a lot of crying,” she says. “I went round and specifically told Ash and it was really sad.

“I’ll still see them all the time in normal life, but when you work with someone under the circumstances that we do, we do a lot of highly emotional things together and spend time making those really deep bonds. The hardest part was telling everybody I was going.”

However, the cast gave Natalie a suitably riotous send-off. “I got three lovely bunches of flowers and five bottles of champagne – I don’t know what that says about me,” she laughs. “I got a beautiful bracelet. There’s writing on the outside that says, ‘Love, The Village’. And a Newcastle United cup that says Wyatt 9 on the back.”

Natalie’s exit comes at a tricky time for ITV soaps, with the broadcaster scaling back its soap schedule and Coronation Street and Emmerdale episodes cut to 30 minutes. Meanwhile, a number of redundancies are rumoured across soap staff.

“I don’t understand when things are so popular why there are cutbacks,” Natalie says. “However, going back to half an hour episodes – I don’t think that’s a bad thing. That’s how I remember soaps back in the day, so it doesn’t feel like a cutback.”

No matter what she does next, Natalie will always miss her Emmerdale co-stars – and Amy’s “chaotic” dress sense. “I’m sure I can do something about that in my own life though,” she laughs.

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