Emmerdale star Ned Porteous has revealed how Joe Tate's evil sidekick Shaun compares to his villainous father figure Graham Foster (Andrew Scarborough).
Sinister Shaun was part of Joe's evil plan to steal his uncle Caleb Miligan's (Will Ash) kidney after it was revealed Joe was suffering from chronic kidney failure and needed a transplant.
After drugging his half-brother Noah Dingle (Jack Downham) to try and get his kidney, he discovered they weren't a match. Joe then manipulated Manpreet Sharma (Rebecca Sarker) into testing Caleb's blood and found he was a suitable donor.
When Joe's plan to kidnap Caleb didn't work, he paid his accomplice Shaun to stab Caleb and he woke up to find Dr Crowley (James Hillier) had removed his kidney, lying that it had been badly damaged in the attack. However, Caleb was oblivious to the fact that Joe had set up the whole ordeal and his kidney was now inside of Joe.
Joe soon faced another problem as he was convinced that his girlfriend's ex Billy Fletcher (Jay Kontzle) had keyed his car and stole his autoimmune suppressant drugs.
However, Joe was humiliated when his attempt to confront Billy ended in disaster and Sam Dingle (James Hooton) planted the idea that a replacement Graham Foster might help him get more respect.
That's when Joe enlisted Shaun to teach Billy a lesson and the character has since drawn parallels to Joe's iconic right-hand man Graham, who met a grisly end in 2020.
Ned told What To Watch and other media about how Shaun and Graham's characters compare.
"They're very different characters; they're very, very different people. Again, another lovely actor to work with, a cool character," he said. "The one missing thing that Joe has as a character is his ability to physically defend himself. Joe rubs a lot of people up the wrong way and some people probably turn to violence, so it would be good for a character like Joe to have a bit of muscle around. But with that comes its own dangers because hired muscles have their own anger issues and stuff like that. So we'll see."
Now, Joe's vile deeds are set to catch up with him when he suspects Shaun is responsible for a harassment campaign against him after receiving a blackmail demand of £100,000.
Things turn nasty between the pair when Joe fires Shaun for disloyalty, and soon culminates in Shaun knocking him out with a shovel. Later on, Joe wakes up in a makeshift hospital room to a menacing Dr Crowley looming over him. What does he want?
Emmerdale airs on weekdays on ITV1 at 7.30pm.
