Everyone knows the world of soaps can be interconnected but just how much cross over is there between Emmerdale’s William Ash and Coronation Street’s Peter Ash?

The pair of soap stars regularly thrill audiences with their tense storylines – albeit from completely different sides of the fence – and act alongside fictional families everyday.

Despite their rivalling careers, the stars are in fact related beyond their professional choice and off-screen enjoy a relationship as cousins.

Peter, 39, rose to fame playing Paul Foreman on the cobbles while his relative Will, 47, took on the role of Caleb Milligan in the dales back in 2022.

Both cousins are currently battling through major storylines on the ITV rival soaps with Peter offering plenty of praise for his soap newbie cousin.

The Corrie regular’s character Paul is currently battling a horrific motor neurone disease (MND) diagnosis on the show and the actor has been excelling as he churns out one heartbreaking scene after the next.

Across in Yorkshire, Will’s character Caleb is dealing with the fall out of discovering that his wife Ruby (Beth Cordingly) killed fellow villager Ethan Anderson (Emile John) in a hit and run.

Last year, Peter was questioned over how he felt his cousin was taking to the soaps world: ‘He’s doing great work. I’m loving it. I’m loving it, go on the Ash’s.’

During the chat, the actor also opened up about his difficult storyline and revealed he felt ‘so much responsibility’ and was worried about representing it properly so as ‘not to cheapen it’.

Before there was Emmerdale for Peter’s cousin William, there was Waterloo Road where he played the troubled school’s deputy head teacher.

At that time, he joked to Inkpellet about some irony surrounding his landing of the gig: ‘I phoned my sister one day while she was at school and she answered the phone.

‘I said, “you’re not in a class, are you?” And she replied, “No Will, I wouldn’t answer the phone in class – this is not Waterloo Road!”’