Adele Silva Says Lisa Riley Scenes Left Bruise Marks on Emmerdale Set
lisa riley scenes on Emmerdale left Adele Silva with bruise marks when she could not keep a straight face. Silva said she often came away from filming with “pinched and bruised” arms after laughing through takes with Riley.
Adele Silva and Lisa Riley
“There’s always one with Lisa Riley,” Silva said. “We just cannot look at each other without something going wrong.” She added that “there were many days on set where I’d have little bruise marks up my arm from pinching myself to stop laughing mid scene.”
Riley is best known as Mandy Dingle in the long-running ITV soap, and Silva’s recollection turns that familiarity into a production note: repeated scenes with the same co-star can become a test of discipline as much as performance. Silva said she and Riley are good pals now, which fits the off-camera energy she described.
Kelly Windsor’s Emmerdale run
Silva played Kelly Windsor on Emmerdale across three major stints, from 1993 to 2000, from 2005 to 2007, and again in 2011. She said returning to the soap “always felt like going home,” and she made clear she has “absolutely no regrets” about her early fame.
Silva also said soap work could run at a punishing pace, with sixteen or seventeen scenes a day and none of them in sequence. That schedule helps explain why she said she and Nick were often handed storylines nobody else would do, then had to keep moving without complaint.
Jacuzzis, rings, and soap pace
“There was so much stuff, but I always loved everything I did with Jimmy King,” Silva said. She recalled “wonderfully ridiculous storylines,” including being in a jacuzzi when Jimmy King proposed and then dropping the ring in the river.
“People can be quite snobby about it. But actually, when you’re on a film set filming one scene all day and you think about what soap actors do, it’s remarkable,” she said. Silva said she would return to soap work, and if she did, “I’d love to do EastEnders.”
For viewers, the practical takeaway is simple: the chaos she described was not a production flaw, but part of the rhythm of soap acting. Silva’s comments make Emmerdale feel less like a polished memory and more like a high-volume workplace where one laugh can leave a mark on your arm.
