Emmerdale icon's soap future confirmed as major news announced

Claire King has signed a new contract that will keep her on Emmerdale.

The actress, 63, made her name starring as the villainous Kim Tate on the ITV soap for a decade between 1989 and 1999 but made a full-time comeback to the programme in 2018, and now it has been confirmed that she will be sticking around in the fictional Yorkshire village for the foreseeable future after impressing bosses. A source told The Sun : "Bosses love Claire and they are delighted that she’s going nowhere. Kim Tate is one of the soap all time greats and it’s only right that she has a massive storyline."

The insider teased that Kim will "stop at nothing to get what she wants" and upcoming scenes will "delve into who Kim is and where she’s come from and see her rediscover that grit that" made her the character that viewers know today. In recent weeks, fans have seen evil Dr Crowley attempt to con the Home Farm millionaire out of her money, but Kim worked out his evil schemes. Not only that but she did what Kim Tate does best, and took her revenge.

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Joe Tate finally confessed to her what had been going on, just as it looked as though he was about to drug her. In fact as viewers watched the scenes unfold, we saw Kim pretend to have been drugged as part of Crowley's plan to steal all her money. Crowley was targeting Joe and blackmailing him over his own dodgy dealings, months on from the fiasco that saw the pair steal Caleb Miligan's kidney. Noah Dingle had also been drugged to see if he was a kidney donor match for Joe, who needed a transplant.

Crowley demanded Joe steal money from Kim and get it to him if he wanted him out of the way. So when Kim declined on the made up investment idea, Crowley came up with a sinister plan that would involve Joe drugging his 'grandmother', before Crowley would enter and steal the cash from her account.

As this unfolded, Kim was seen laying on the bed unable to move after seemingly being injected with what Crowley had given Joe. As Crowley threatened to harm Kim with his surgical scalpels, demanding the password to her account so he could steal the money, Kim appeared to deteriorate.

Crowley leaned in to get a better hearing of the code Kim was saying to him very quietly. But in that moment it became clear that Kim and Joe were faking the entire scenario, and she had not been drugged at all She leapt up and jabbed Crowley with the needle, injecting him with the medication before Joe smirked. He'd told Kim everything and they teamed up to take down Crowley. Even the surgeon's accomplice Shaun was in on it, paid by Kim and Joe to switch sides and help them defeat the doctor. Kim explained how she knew she was being played thanks to Joe, and she did not take being scammed, almost, very lightly.

During her early days in the serial, Kim's infamous marriage to Frank Tate (Norman Bowler), and at one point, she faked her own death in an attempt to frame him before leaving him to die of a heart attack. After marrying again and concocting a string of moneymaking scams, she left the village in a helicopter with nearly £200,000 of her stepson Chris' money.

In her time away from the soap, Claire appeared on Celebrity Big Brother and as a panellist on Loose Women before joining Coronation Street in 2014, starring as the best friend of Liz McDonald ( Beverley Callard ) for a period of three years. The soap veteran recently admitted that she doesn't know if she will still be on-screen in decades to come, but felt "fortunate" to have had the chance to return to her signature role.

She said: "I'm not sure I'll still be here in 20 years. It's a nice thought, but I think they would have to wheel me on set.. I've been fortunate to come back to Emmerdale. My return to the show was meant to be a nice little retirement job for me. But because Kim is at the centre of everything, it hasn't really worked out that way."

Emmerdale airs weeknights at 7:30pm on ITV1 and ITVX, with an hour-long episode on Thursdays. *Follow Mirror Celebs and TV on TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Threads.