Emmerdale’s Samantha Giles on why she left the soap after Bernice’s heartbreaking exit

Emmerdale's Samantha Giles has explained why she left the soap after Bernice's heartbreaking exit aired last night.

The actress confirmed she would be leaving the soap earlier this year. And on Thursday, Bernice left the 'dales with her daughter Dee Dee to go to Australia, after she learned that her ex-husband Charlie had been in a serious accident. Giles appeared on This Morning on Friday, where she discussed her decision to leave the soap - and why she was happy Bernice wasn't killed off. "I want to play something a bit more gritty," she explained. "I want to do some other stuff. There are so many things out there." She added that while she told the producers she didn't mind what happened to her character, she was happy to see that Bernice hadn't met a grisly end.

"I said [to the producers] I don't mind what they did, because I think if you say that you're going, you can't then say, 'Oh, don't kill me, though'," she said. "So I wouldn't have minded if they had [killed me off].

"But they wanted to leave it open. So that's really nice that she's not dead."

The actress first joined the show back in 1998 as a barmaid at The Woolpack, before leaving the village to take a job on a cruise ship in 2002. She made a brief appearance in 2004, before returning again in 2012.