In Mental Health Awareness Week, Emmerdale actor Jay Kontzle talks to The Mirror about he overcome childhood trauma with the help of psychiatrist and loving grandparents
Drawn into a gripping whodunnit, Billy Fletcher is at the centre of a dramatic Emmerdale storyline, after his estranged wife Dawn confessed to him that she’d pushed her lover Joe Tate out of the window.
As Joe (Ned Porteous) fights for his life in a coma, Billy – played by Jay Kontzle – overhears Dawn (Olivia Bromley) confess to still having feelings for the injured villain.
Gutted, Billy threatens to go to the police if she doesn’t give him full custody of their kids.
“Billy has been doing all he can to keep his family together -and will always have hope he and Dawn can be together, but for now his kids are his priority,” Jay tells The Mirror. “He will do anything to keep his family.”
While Billy’s motives are twisted, Jay, 34, identifies with the importance he attributes to family.
Unlike his character, who he has played since 2017, he is very happily married to artist Mimi. who he lives with in Yorkshire, along with their kids Kaibo, eight, Zian, six, and Xiao, two.
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And he is determined to give his children a stable upbringing, having tragically lost his single mum in a car crash when he was just four-years-old.
Forever grateful to his grandparents Ann and Mike Kontzle, who brought him up as kinship carers, after Louise, 23, a DJ at Manchester’s legendary Hacienda club, was killed on her way to a gig in Derby, he says: “They gave up their whole lives to push me forward.
“They got nothing for it and had no reason to do it other than their love for me.
“I would have been put in foster care and not enjoying the life I have now if my grandparents hadn’t taken me in.”
For this reason, Jay vehemently opposes the latest government cuts to kinship care support, and to therapy for adopted kids – urging Keir Starmer to reverse the decision – as financial help for therapy under the Kinship Care fund has been slashed by 40% per child.
Joe says children brought up in kinship care – by a relative or friend – usually because their parents are unable to care for them, have often suffered some form of early trauma.
He received therapy after his mother was killed and says that, combined with his grandparents’ care, it was “life-saving”.
“I had a child psychiatrist. She obviously massively helped me,” he says. “I remember doing toy therapy.
“My psychiatrist was incredible, such a really understanding person. Not only did I explain a lot of things to her, I actually felt valued as a kid.”
Jay saw a psychiatrist from the age of five until he went to secondary school, due to the immense trauma of losing Louise.
Speaking to The Mirror during Mental Health Awareness Week, he continues: “My therapy really helped with building self-esteem. Mental health comes from feeling valued.
“I think it’s all well and good for adults to do positive things like going to the gym and doing what you can to feel better, but we’re social beings, and we need to talk to people.
“That’s especially for kids who are not feeling valued or not getting praised.”
Jay is immensely grateful that he was able to come out the other side, but that is only because of the support that he received from mental health professionals and loved ones.
He adds: “Foster carers do great work but being looked after by my grandparents really saved my life, as they already loved me and knew me. They didn’t need to be given a folder of all my likes and dislikes
“It’s ridiculous that they didn’t get the same financial support as foster carers and that’s still the case.
“And now things are getting even worse for them.
“My nan had to work two jobs to raise me, while also grieving for her daughter.”
Jay, who has the ring his mother wore when she died and plans to pass it on to his daughter Kaibo when she is older, really identifies with the current Emmerdale storyline in which Billy and Dawn are doing all they can to protect adoptive daughter Clemmie – who is thought to be the real attacker who put Joe in hospital.
They became 10-year-old Clemmie’s guardians as her real mum Beth was a drug addict.
Emmerdale fans saw Joe threaten to have Clemmie returned to care if she exposed his relationship with Dawn, after she discovered they were lovers.
Jay adds:” Its a cruel unforgivable thing to say to a child.
“Although Dawn is not related to Clemmie, she was her mother’s friend who stepped in to look after – rather than see her in foster care, so it’s very similar to kinship care.
“Dawn and Billy are trying to give Clemmie a better future. They are both protective of Clemmie.”
Meanwhile, Billy’s stepson Lucas and he and Dawn’s baby Evan are similar ages to Jay’s real life kids.
He adds: “My kids are everything. Watching them grow up just makes me really value life. They are such loving caring kids – always giving cuddles.
“I find it difficult to be sentimental because of my past, but the kids help me unlock that side.
“I want to push them to be driven and be successful in their lives and do as much as possible.”
Jay is certainly a shining example – with Emmerdale not being his first shot at fame.
Aged 17, he founded pop band The Mend, who were snapped up by former Take That manager Nigel Martin- Smith, and successfully auditioned for The X Factor – before being forced to leave the 2011 competition, as acts weren’t meant to already have a manager.
“We had to leave after Bootcamp – we didn’t even make it on screen! I was gutted,” says Jay.
Bouncing back, The Mend appeared on Britain’s Got Talent the following year, impressing a surprisingly excitable Simon Cowell so much that he jumped on one of his bandmates’ backs!
Jay says: “ Simon was saying ‘you guys are going to go far.’ He was quite childish, I didn’t expect him to be like that.
“We reached the BGT semi-finals but then got beaten by a dancing dog.”
Despite losing to Ashleigh Butler and her dancing dog, Pudsey, The Mend went on to support Little Mix before disbanding in 2016.
“The band was a good experience. We got as far as we were meant to. I learnt a lot – namely never take fame too seriously and think it is bigger than it is,” says Jay. “Afterwards, I was completely forgotten about until Emmerdale.
A year before joining the soap, he worked as a learning support assistant at Sandbach Boys School in Cheshire, teaching kids with attachment disorder and autism.
“I wanted to give back—help kids as I had been helped,” he says.
“I applied for the Head of Year 7 and 8 position, because I had a good rapport with the kids, and they were getting good grades – but then I got offered Emmerdale.”
While he loves every minute of his Emmerdale success, family will always be Jay’s driving force.
Determined to make his mum proud, he adds: “Everyone tells me she was such a bright light, really good energy, really funny. It’s something that I’ve always tried to live up to.
“She had achieved so much in her life already when she died.
“I knew I wanted to do something with my life just to appreciate the life that she’s given up and make the sacrifices my nan and grandad made all worthwhile.”
