Lucy Pargeter has admitted she loves wearing a mask because she won't get recognised in public.
Lucy Pargeter
The 'Emmerdale' actress - who has played Chas Dingle on the ITV soap since 2002 - revealed sometimes fans can get confused between fiction and reality, and she has to deal with people getting cross in public with how her character treated Paddy Kirk (Dominic Brunt).
Appearing on ITV's 'Lorraine', she told host Ranvir Singh: "Recently, because of lockdown episodes, Chaz has been quite snappy.
"She always takes a lot of stuff out on Paddy anyway, and I think people have taken it to heart that she's somewhat kind of mentally digging at him all the time. But that's just her, that's their relationship!
"But thankfully now we've got the masks, I don't get recognised a lot. It's a bonus really because you can walk around and feel like, 'Hey I can look awful, I don't have to dress up, no one's gonna know who I am'. It's just brilliant!"
As well as face coverings, there have also been plenty of changes on set to make filming safe amid the pandemic.
The 43-year-old star added: "We did have three months of not working and then we went in slowly, and it's been a lot of distancing.
"We have the two metre pole - I think everybody does, who's working now. There's a lot of - we do our own hair and makeup, we have our costumes, we have to sort all that out, and the props.
"It's been amazing to get back on set, and the atmosphere's still exactly the same.
"We're all still messing around the having a laugh, and I think that's what we all need - and hopefully still producing stuff that doesn't jar too much because of distancing."
Meanwhile, Lucy also noted that she has been grateful for daytime TV - including 'This Morning' with Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby - this year as it brought a "sense of normality".
She said: "I found, through lockdown, just being able to tune in and see 'Lorraine', or Phil and Holly, or 'Loose Women', or anything like that - it was that sense of normality that you needed really.
"It was just that sense of, 'life is still going on, everything's kind of OK'. So people need the soaps."
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