Emmerdale star has surprising side job that keeps him | UK News

Emmerdale star Joe-Warren Plant has a surprising side job that followers might not be conscious of. Joe-Warren, 23, has performed the function of Jacob Gallagher on the ITV cleaning soap since 2010, but has one other job on the side which keeps him “grounded”, reveals his former co-star Roxy Shahidi. Roxy, 42, bowed out of the cleaning soap after 17 years of enjoying Leyla Harding, with her character tragically killed off as a consequence of the limo crash in February. Despite waving goodbye to Emmerdale, Roxy and Matthew Wolfenden have returned for the second collection of their podcast, Celebrity Side Hustles. The duo launched the podcast final yr, inviting well-known company on to share more about their side initiatives.

They have been joined by Joe-Warren this time around, who reveals all about his surprising side hustle. Despite starring on one of the most important soaps in the UK, Joe-Warren spends his time working as a waiter when he’s not filming at Emmerdale. He has been getting caught in to his “weekend job” for years, working his means up from potwash to waiter. Matthew, 44, defined: “It’s true. He waits tables in a restaurant in Blackpool, he still does it now. I think with Joe, because he grew up on Emmerdale, you miss out on things like getting a bar job. So one day he just went, ‘oh, I’m. I’m gonna get a job in a restaurant’.”

Matthew, who stepped down from the function of David Metcalfe in 2023, continued: “I think he started off washing dishes. He’s kept himself grounded, got a normal job on a weekend and yeah, that’s just really admirable and beautiful.

Heaping praise on his former co-star, Matthew added: “He’s just such a attractive younger man – he’s never bought starry about it. I feel if, if my youngsters go down that route and may be like Joe Warren, then I’d be very proud.”

Joe is just one of the familiar faces joining Matt and Roxy as they sit down for series two. Over the next few weeks they’ll be joined by Emmerdale‘s Lisa Riley and former Hollyoaks star Adam Rickett, who are set to spill about the off-screen projects people might not be aware of.

Matthew explained how he was “blown away” after discovering details of what some of their co-stars get up to away from the soap.

“It’s been actually fascinating to communicate to people about, for occasion, Jessie Elland, who had written a novel which no one actually knew about,” he said.

“Then on the flip side, speaking to Danny Miller, whose side hustle is Once Upon a Smile, which he set up with his pal and fellow actor, Daniel Jillings, years and years in the past.

“And over the years, he’s raised millions and we didn’t realise this. He’s raised millions of pounds for bereaved children and families. I mean, the work that he’s done, it just really blew me away.”

Matthew and Roxy struck up a close friendship on Emmerdale and have labored on different initiatives in addition to the cleaning soap and Side Hustles, including writing for dramas like Holby City and Doctors.

Explaining how Side Hustles got here about, Matthew mentioned: “Roxy will probably tell you a slightly different story, but the way that I remember is me and Roxy were filming together on location in this house, and it was just me and her all day.

“There’s a lot of downtime when they’re setting lights up and resetting cameras. We were filming a lot together in Emmerdale because our characters were kind of best buddies and we were spending a lot of time together because we were writing together outside of Emmerdale.”

This led the duo to speculate what else they might, and they finally landed on a podcast.

He continued: “So we sat there and brainstormed. We just couldn’t come up with something that we could do that was different to anything that we’ve seen before.

“And then we started talking about the fact that we’ve always got these side hustles and I was like, ‘well, that’s perfect – side hustles’.

“Why don’t we speak to people off the TV that have these really interesting side hustles, things people don’t know about or might want to know more about.”