Lawrence Robb, who portrays Mackenzie Boyd on the beloved soap *Emmerdale*.

Recently opened up about some unexpected challenges he faced while filming a scene involving a rather unusual co-star: a stuffed bull.

The scene, which was meant to depict a tense and potentially dangerous encounter between Mackenzie and the bull.

Ended up being more amusing than terrifying, at least for the actors involved.

In a candid interview, Lawrence admitted that the scene didn’t quite go as planned, mainly due to the nature of his inanimate scene partner.

“It was like the quietest stuffed bull I’ve ever seen,” he joked, reflecting on the somewhat surreal experience.

The bull, intended to add a layer of drama and tension to the storyline, turned out to be more of a challenge than expected—but not in the way one might think.

Filming such scenes in a soap opera is often about creating the illusion of reality, where props and practical effects are used to simulate situations that are too risky or impractical to stage with real animals or conditions. In this case, the team opted for a stuffed bull to avoid any potential dangers that could arise from working with a live animal on set. However, the decision to use a stuffed bull brought its own set of difficulties, as Lawrence and his fellow actors quickly discovered.

For Lawrence, one of the biggest challenges was maintaining the intensity and seriousness that the scene required while interacting with an obviously fake bull. Acting, after all, is about suspending disbelief, and convincing the audience that what they’re seeing is real—even when the actor themselves knows it’s anything but. “It’s one thing to imagine you’re facing down a charging bull,” Lawrence explained, “but it’s another to do that when the bull in question is just a stuffed prop.”