Emmerdale star Nicola Wheeler has warned there’s more trouble ahead for Nicola King following Jimmy King’s heartbreaking death, as the fallout from the crash continues
Jimmy has been hiding quite the secret
Emmerdale star Nicola Wheeler has warned there’s more trouble ahead for her character following Jimmy King’s death.
Nick Miles departed the ITV soap last week in sad scenes when Jimmy got caught up in the marquee incident. Devastatingly, Jimmy died with Nicola by his side in heartbreaking scenes, but the fallout from the death continues.
Next week, Nicola is anxious about affording to give Jimmy the funeral he deserves. She decides to turn to Jimmy’s haulage shares for Elliot and his future, before later discovering that Jimmy has sold them.
As Nicola realises the money from the sale of the shares is missing, she discovers that they are in more financial worries than she knew. The family home has been remortgaged and in arrears and Nicola is continuing to struggle.
Speaking about her own future, she said: “She can’t believe that life is going to exist without him (Jimmy), especially as the day was supposed to start with something very romantic, and it ended in tragedy.
“Why can’t Nicola have lots of different relationships? I’ve tried to pit she should start going on dating apps and just get horrendous dates and really bad experiences. It would bring quite a bit of fun back into it.”
Warning there was quite the surprise ahead, she added: ” think the audience are gonna be mighty surprised at the life Jimmy was leading that nobody knew about. It’s unsettling because it’s totally against his personality. You would never imagine that Jimmy in this world would behave like this.”
Filming Nick’s final scenes was “surreal” for Nicola, who has worked with the actor for years.
She said: “It was really surreal. It sort of ends, and you go, ‘Oh gosh, that’s it’. We’ll never be Nick and Jimmy again together. I was gutted because I think it’s the institution that Jimmy and Nicola were, where I was sort of like, ‘oh God, that’s over’.
“Even whilst we were filming it all, it never felt real because we film out of sync. When it came to doing all the scenes where he dies, it was odd. It’s almost like you didn’t want to do it. They were beautifully written scenes, so you want to do them justice but at the same time, you don’t want them to end because then it means this is final.”
As for what’s next, Nicola has hinted there could be a new romance on the cards – from an unlikely source.
“I can’t imagine the character would ever fully move on. I think there’s always going to be part of her that loves him. Her heart will grow to fit another love in, but she will never let Jimmy go,” she explained.
“Something happens in which I can only say Nicola behaves appallingly, and Kev is a gentleman, and I think from that moment she starts to see him in a different light.”
Emmerdale star Nick Miles, who played Jimmy King on the ITV soap for more than two decades, has addressed final scenes which saw the beloved character killed off in a crash
Nick Miles has left Emmerdale after 22 years as Jimmy King
Nick Miles has addressed his exit from Emmerdale – just hours after his character was killed off in explosive scenes. The actor, 63, has played Jimmy King on the long-running soap since 2004, but departed the Yorkshire-based serial in scenes that aired on Thursday evening.
Viewers will know that, in recent times, Jimmy and wife Nicola had been looking to the future, and had even planned to renew their wedding vows. Jimmy had not disclosed to Nicola about his financial troubles though, but tragedy struck when he crashed crashed into the wedding marquee where Joe Tate and Dawn Taylor were having a heart-to-heart.
No explanation has been offered yet as to what caused the fatal crash but actor Nick, who previously starred in The Bill, has spoken out about the sudden departure.
Asked by co-star Nicola Wheeler, who plays his on-screen wife, in a video that appeared on Emmerdale’s official Instagram why his character had to go, he simply reasoned: “Everybody I know who read that script, the first thing they said was that it made me cry.”
Nicola was with him in his final moments, telling Jimmy she loved him and holding his hand, as he imagined their vow renewal. With Jimmy gone, Nicola wept before fleeing the marquee just as it exploded.
Just moments before, everything played out as Nicola raced into the marquee to find her husband, was in a bad way and suggested he might not be making it out.
In heart-wrenching scenes, Jimmy shared his love for his wife, but sadly he succumbed to his injuries and died in the car. Moments later the marquee looked as though it was about to be engulfed in flames.
Fans were certainly not impressed with the shock death, with one writing: “He deserved better.” Another said: “I’m still in bits what an episode. Bravo to the cast,” as a third added: “I can’t get over the episode. I was in tears.”
Another fan commented: “I hate that they are getting rid of [name].” A further post read: “He deserved something more epic,” as a final fan said: “You’ve done [name] dirty!”
Other fans confessed they couldn’t believe the show was getting rid of the character. Another fan said they were “fuming” given the character had been a apart of the show for so long.”
Emmerdale airs weeknights at 8pm on ITV1 and ITVX.*
Aug. 17 (UPI) — The U.S. House Ethics Committee announced Monday that it is investigating Rep. Jimmy Gomez over allegations of sexual misconduct, the latest House member to come under an ethics probe.
The release from the bipartisan committee did not detail the allegations, only stating it was investigating the California Democrat for possibly having “engaged in sexual misconduct in violation of the Code of Official Conduct or any other applicable standard of conduct, including engaging in inappropriate sexual contact with a House staffer.”
The committee noted that while it has made its investigation public that does not mean an ethics violation has been committed.
The announcement comes months after the New York Post reported in April that Gomez kissed a congressional aide to another House Democrat at a backyard party hosted by former Rep. Eric Swalwell in the summer of 2023. The report stated the aide was two decades younger than Gomez, who is now 51, but was 48 the summer of the alleged kiss.
The Monday announcement confirms an early June CNN report that the ethics committee was investigating Gomez over allegations of sexual misconduct.
Gomez is married to Mary Hodge and together they have one son. In January 2023, Gomez and his son made headlines as the new father brought his infant son to the House, wearing him on the chamber floor in a baby carrier.
Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-CA, carries his infant son Hodge on the chamber floor of the House at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, January 5, 2023. File Photo by Pat Benic/UPI
Following the June CNN report, Gomez released a statement acknowledging that he made mistakes in his marriage but that he violated no House ethics rules, while stating he would cooperate with its investigation.
Gomez on Monday issued a very similar statement to Courthouse News in response to the committee’s announcement, stating, “Although my actions were consensual in nature and haven’t violated the law or House Ethics rules, that doesn’t diminish the impact that these mistakes have made on those I care about most.”
“I have and continue to sincerely apologize to my family, friends and the people that II have the privilege to serve,” he said.
“I am deeply sorry to my wife for the pain and embarrassment that I have brought into our lives.”
The investigation into Gomez is the latest probe involving House members of both parties that the ethics panel has launched this summer.
Earlier this month, the panel made public an investigation into allegations of domestic violence and illegal drug use by Rep. Max Miller, R-Ohio. It also completed its investigation of Rep. Chuck Edwards, R-N.C., finding substantial reason to believe he violated House rules concerning sexual harassment and creating a hostile workplace and recommended that he be censured. Edwards has since announced he is dropping his re-election campaign.
In April, both Swalwell, D-Calif., and Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, resigned amid House Ethics investigations into alleged sexual misconduct. The Swalwell probe included allegations involving an employee, while the Gonzales probe was looking into allegations involving a congressional employee and alleged special favors.
Members of the National Guard patrol near the Washington Monument on Tuesday. Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo
The House Ethics Committee announced Monday that it is investigating Democratic Rep. Jimmy Gomez of Los Angeles for alleged sexual misconduct.
The committee said it is investigating allegations that Gomez, 51, engaged in “inappropriate sexual contact with a House staffer,” according to a statement released by the committee’s chair, Rep. Michael Guest (R-Miss.), and ranking member Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord).
The New York Post reported in April that Gomez, a married five-term congressman, was spotted in 2023 kissing a much younger staffer from another office. CNN reported that the House Ethics Committee later discovered other allegations of sexual misconduct by Gomez.
Gomez acknowledged in a statement Monday that he made “personal mistakes outside my marriage,” but said that his “actions were consensual in nature and haven’t violated the law or House Ethics rules.”
Guest and DeSaulnier said in their statement that the panel’s public acknowledgment of the investigation “does not itself indicate that any violation has occurred.”
Gomez said he is “confident that a full and impartial review of the facts will bear that out” and that he is “ready to cooperate with the Ethics Committee inquiry and provide it with whatever information it might need.”
The committee can take a wide range of actions if it substantiates the allegations in an investigation, including recommending that a member be reprimanded, censured or removed, or referring the conduct to the U.S. Department of Justice for criminal investigation.
Gomez represents California’s 34th Congressional District, stretching from Koreatown to Eagle Rock. He faces an election challenge in November from Democrat Angela Gonzales-Torres, who has the backing of the progressive Justice Democrats.
Gomez received 46% of the vote in the June primary, while Gonzales-Torres got 30%.
Gonzales-Torres has been particularly critical of Gomez because of his past support from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC.
Gonzales-Torres blasted Gomez in a statement to The Times after news of the investigation.
“At a time when working families are struggling the most, we need to get creeps out of office,” she said. “We need representatives who will actually focus on fighting for policies like Medicare for All — not people like Rep. Jimmy Gomez and Donald Trump, who are mired in scandal and investigation.”
Gomez was friends with former California Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin), who resigned from Congress earlier this year and suspended his campaign for California gubernatorial campaign after being accused of sexual assault by multiple women. Gomez had been a co-chair of Swalwell’s campaign.
The 2023 incident reportedly occurred at a party hosted by Swalwell.
Gomez is married to Mary Hodge, a onetime top aide to former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. The couple have a son whom Gomez wore in a baby carrier during the lengthy House speaker election in 2023. That same year, Gomez founded the Congressional Dads Caucus, which has advocated for expanded child tax credits and other parent-friendly legislation.
Gomez apologized to Hodge in his statement.
“I am deeply sorry to my wife for the pain and embarrassment that I have brought into our lives,” he said. “Her sacrifices and support are central to my ability to serve, and I can only feel gratitude for her grace and strength.”
On stage at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado, a far cry from the sweaty basement punk shows of the band’s early days, Jimmy Eat World played breakthrough power pop hit “The Middle” as the sold-out crowd sang along with the final chorus that “everything will be all right, all right.”
“It really is incredible to us to think about everyone who bothered to spend time with this record and made something of it for themselves over 25 years. This is your guys’ record as much as it’s ours, really,” singer-guitarist Jim Adkins said from the stage.
The band, which has generally shied away from nostalgia plays over its 30-plus year career, is performing the platinum-selling “Bleed American” album in its entirety on tour this summer, including a stop at Warped Tour in Long Beach on Saturday, a matching bookend to the band’s original promotion of the album.
Share via
“It solidified us as, ‘This is what we do. Let the day job go.’ It turned into full-time rock and roll. And that moment only happens once, so it felt appropriate to honor it at 25,” bassist Rick Burch said backstage before the band’s Brooklyn tour stop in June.
Released on July 24, 2001, “Bleed American” was one of the last great rock records of the monoculture, arriving months before Apple’s iPod launched and made shuffle the default and 15 years before streaming became the dominant way to consume music.
“When ‘Bleed American’ took off it was right at the transition of the internet,” says Jim Adkins.
(Evelyn Freja / For The Times)
A hit with Hollywood roots
Just over a quarter of a century ago, four guys from Mesa, Ariz., came to L.A. to record their fourth album.
Jimmy Eat World’s Adkins, Burch, drummer Zach Lind and guitarist Tom Linton earned recording money between tours by working construction, driving around car dealership customers and selling art supplies and auto parts.
The band had cut ties with Capitol Records after 1999’s “Clarity” — a sweeping, lush and highly influential work highly regarded by their contemporaries that would inspire third-wave emo superstars including My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy and Paramore — that the major label had no idea how to market, even after “Lucky Denver Mint” got pickup on L.A.’s alt rock tastemaker KROQ-FM.
“If that song would have been on ‘Bleed American,’ that would have been a No. 1 song,” said Jim Suptic, of Kansas-based second-wave emo band the Get Up Kids, who have been on the “Bleed American” anniversary run. Suptic said that he was inspired to start the band after seeing Jimmy Eat World live in the mid-’90s.
With the band’s tight budget, producer Mark Trombino, who produced “Clarity” and predecessor “Static Prevails,” worked with the band for free in L.A., banking on the future success of the album. After recording drums at Cherokee Studios, the band relocated to Harddrive Analog & Digital Recording in North Hollywood to make the bulk of “Bleed American.”
“The studio was so small, it didn’t have a lounge,” Lind recalled.
But there was a bus stop outside they used instead, where they would hang out with “an assortment of characters,” Adkins said.
He and Lind commuted to the Valley from Redondo Beach, where they crashed on the floor of Lind’s brother’s place. Linton fondly remembers the great food in the city and hanging out with friends in other bands while Burch spent downtime skateboarding in L.A.
Even without the cash or support from a label, recording “Bleed American” didn’t feel like a do-or-die moment for the band’s future.
“We just kind of figured we might have to go out and just release this ourselves. Let’s just do the best job we can, and be happy with what we put out,” Linton said.
But with the buzz growing around the new music, record labels came calling.
‘The Middle’ meets the moment
By the time the album dropped in July 2001, the guitar-heavy snarling title track of “Bleed American” had already been in regular rotation on alt-rock stations for a month.
After a stint on the Warped Tour, Jimmy Eat World set out on a U.S. headlining tour in the fall, with Hey Mercedes opening.
“I remember that tour in particular, them sort of really finding their confidence in their voice and their shows and their performance and the whole package. And this was before ‘The Middle’ really broke, but I could tell that they were really firing on all cylinders,” said Hey Mercedes singer-guitarist Bob Nanna, whose influential emo group Braid first played with Jimmy Eat World in 1998.
The album landed on the Billboard charts three weeks after its release, and while its peak position was 31, it remained on the chart for 70 weeks. (A couple of months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the name of the album was changed to “Jimmy Eat World” on pressings before reverting to the original title in 2008.)
“When ‘Bleed American’ took off it was right at the transition of the internet,” Adkins said.
By 2002, “Bleed American” was taking off due to the popularity of the song “The Middle.”
(Scott Gries / Getty Images)
The media landscape hadn’t yet transformed. Rock music magazines like Spin, NME, Alternative Press and Kerrang! were thriving. The band made the rounds on the late-night talk shows as “The Middle” video clip played on MTV’s popular show “Total Request Live.”
“Things hadn’t splintered out into a zillion niche locations just quite yet,” Adkins said.
By March 2002, “The Middle” had hit the Billboard charts, where it climbed to No. 5 by the summer and spent 33 weeks on the Hot 100.
“They were a real band that had a radio hit, and not a radio band reverse engineered,” the Get Up Kids’ Suptic said.
The success was surreal for the band members as they heard the song on the radio, in restaurants and the gym. Today, you can still summon an entire generation with the opening guitar melody.
“I understand why that song has resonated,” Lind said. “I think there’s a few themes in the album that resonate with people in times when things are going tough. You know, ‘The Middle’ is definitely one of those songs that so many people have found encouragement from, whether they’re dealing with a breakup or going through cancer.”
“It seems like one of those songs that people have used to feel better and I think that’s obviously really powerful.”
“It solidified us as, ‘This is what we do. Let the day job go.’ It turned into full-time rock and roll,” says bassist Rick Burch about the success of “Bleed American.”
(Evelyn Freja / For The Times)
Here we are now
But the fans selling out the tour dates around the U.S. know much more than the hits, singing along to the deep cuts after traveling hundreds of miles to get to the show, in some cases.
Fans traveled from states like Michigan and Texas for the tour kickoff at Red Rocks in Colorado.
Robie O’Donnell took the train up to New York from the Washington, D.C., area to take his 12-year-old daughter to her first Jimmy Eat World show. The Brooklyn show was his 25th after he discovered them in the late ‘90s from a recommendation on the Get Up Kids’ website.
Behind him in line hours before doors opened was Jane Kung, who was only 8 when “Bleed American” was released and got into it when she was in high school. She didn’t want to miss the chance to hear it live.
“The fact that so many people wanted to come see this is something I didn’t expect,” Adkins said about the tour.
The fans get a chance to geek out over the rarely-played deep cuts from the album, like “Your House,” which required a revamp because of the studio work on the song, and the live debut of “(Splash) Turn Twist,” which was on the Japanese import of the album. Even louder than the sing-along to “The Middle” is the call and response from the crowd on the album’s second-biggest hit, “Sweetness.”
“Having this piece that we’ve created be embraced by so many is a very accomplished feeling,” Burch said.
Nanna even ventured into the crowd after Hey Mercedes opened the Brooklyn show, singing along to “A Praise Chorus,” the band’s crunchy guitar-filled love letter to rock music, among others.
“The world is a tough, s— place now and to have these moments where everybody can sing along to something that’s just pure joy was really soul enriching,” he said.
