When Yungblud appeared on ‘Emmerdale’
Since releasing his debut album four years ago, Yungblud (Dominic Harrison) has become one of the most divisive figures in music. He’s become a success on both sides of the Atlantic with two UK number-one albums to his name, but his life could have gone down another path.
Music was always part of his life as his father ran a series of guitar shops, but he also had a passion for acting. Before getting a record deal with Interscope in 2016, he featured in the Disney Channel series, The Lodge as a musician, Oz. However, he didn’t return for series two of the programme and instead decided to focus on his music career by this point.
“They had me for three seasons, but I left after one,” he later told The Guardian about his flirtation with the Disney Channel, and added, “They knew I was a punk.”
During this time, he was a student at ArtsEd, an independent performing arts school in Chiswick, West London, before leaving at 16. He also had an interest in ballet along with acting and music, but it was the latter Harrison knew he needed to dedicate his life to pursue.
However, things could have turned out differently if his role in the British soap opera, Emmerdale, had become permanent. Yet, according to IMDB, it was limited to a one-off appearance as Matt, who didn’t have a surname.
The programme has been running for half a century and is set in rural Yorkshire. It’s filmed where Harrison is from, and in all likelihood, many others he knew growing up who also had an interest in acting will have made similar cameos in Emmerdale.
Harrison isn’t the only prominent British musician to appear as a teenager on embarrassing television programmes. The 1975 singer Matty Healy was a regular extra on the drama series Waterloo Road. The show was set in a school and starred his mother, Denise Welch. Meanwhile, Sam Fender appeared on the ITV detective drama Vera in 2010. However, he later recalled: “I got killed in the first ever episode of that ITV detective programme called Vera set in the North East. I lasted like 10 seconds, I think.”
Despite Yungblud’s early experience in Emmerdale, he’s not giving up on acting and the wider world of film. Next month, the short film Mars premieres, which is inspired by his music, and Harrison acted as a producer on the product. Additionally, he was almost cast in Danny Boyle’s Sex Pistols series, Pistol, “The casting director said I was ‘too close’ for it,” he told Nylon.
Watch Yungblud’s first appearance on television below.
