Emmerdale spoilers follow.

Emmerdale stars Jay Kontzle and Olivia Bromley have

discussed the emotional toll of a recent story, seeing their

characters’ baby boy Evan being diagnosed with leukaemia.

Jay, who plays Billy Fletcher, and Olivia, who stars as Dawn

Fletcher, have been working with Leukaemia Care to portray the storyline in an accurate and sensitive manner.

“We had this really amazing conversation with parents who do have children who’ve been diagnosed recently and they were really open and generous with their own experiences,” Olivia told Digital Spy and other media.

Related: Former Emmerdale star Kelvin Fletcher reveals daughter has joined Hollyoaks

“Billy and Dawn’s life is just going on and they have other stuff going on to deal with and this just comes as a curveball and they just have to deal with it and it impacts their relationship and their family life,” she continued.

“So we’ve been talking about parents and families how, in that split second diagnosis, out of nowhere, everything changes and you just have to deal with it.”

Jay said they “requested” to talk with people directly affected by leukaemia in order to deal with such a delicate topic in the way it deserved to be depicted on screen.

“We requested that we wanted to have case studies and speak to people, not just the charity, and understand the fundamentals of this type of leukaemia but what parents have gone through, the stresses, and just understanding it properly, because there’s no point in doing a story [otherwise],” he said.