Alicya Eyo feels "honoured" that her 'Emmerdale' exit came with the helicopter crash.
Alicya Eyo in Emmerdale
The 39-year-old actress bowed out of her role as Ruby Haswell last night (05.08.15) following the dramatic stunt, which saw the chopper plunge from the sky into the village hall and she was "so excited" about being a key part of the huge storyline.
She said: "It was a good few months ago now that I had the heads-up, and I was so excited about the storyline. If you're going to go, what a way to go - it's not every day that you get a helicopter blade to the abdomen!
"Just to be part of the episode was brilliant and I feel really honoured.
"I couldn't wait to shoot it and it was even better than I expected when we did. The atmosphere was electric.
"Playing Ruby's death scenes was quite hard and sad, but I was just so lucky to have such a great director and Laura Norton (Kerry) and Liam Fox (Dan) there filming with me. I couldn't have wished for it to be any better."
Alicya kept her departure from the soap so secret, she didn't even tell her family because she wanted them to be as shocked as everyone else.
Asked if it has been hard to keep her exit secret, she told DigitalSpy: "It has been, but I also quite enjoy stuff like that because I wanted the episode to have as much impact as it could.
"I didn't even tell my family and there were loads of people who I'm quite close to but decided not to tell until after the episode had been on.
"I've been asked some difficult and tricky questions so that's been the hard part, but I've managed it!"