I want to ask you about Bad Girls, because Karen Betts was a different type of character, wasn't she?
Yes.
And when you started you discovered that you'd been brought into it because the ITV network wanted changes on the second series.
Yes, which I wasn't aware of until I was there and up and running. It was very flattering for me, but also not very good because of the characters they were trying to swap round. They thought Simone Lahbib's character [Helen] wasn't really working, but then it did work because she and Nicki became two of the biggest characters in the show there's ever been. But it was the network that wanted changes and I felt really guilty and bad about that – not that it was my fault at all, but you just have to deal with it.
I think Helen's character did work better when she was more on the side of the prisoners, didn't she?
Yes, exactly. I think Karen was firm but fair. She was also a victim as well – of Fenner, they had an ongoing battle for years. But after the first two or three series I felt she wasn't really going anywhere, and became a bit of an information service, so that's when I decided to leave.
After you left you came back again, really to tie up the loose ends with the character.
Yes, it hadn't been tied up enough – she'd just kind of vanished. So Brian [Parks, the executive producer] and I thought it could work with getting rid of Fenner, which we did – but then he still came back!
Yes, I think that was a surprise, because his storyline really did seem to be over and then the next series started and there he was again.
Exactly, and then when they did get rid of him he still came back as a ghost!
I've read your autobiography, which covers your life from being a young girl to all the acting roles you've done – what was it that made you decide to put it all down on paper?
I think because I'd had a really bad three or four years and I had so much negativity going on. So I thought, 'right, I'm single, I want to make a fresh start and the only way to do that is to pull yourself out of this'. And that's what I did, and I thought that the cathartic way to do this was to put it down on paper. I'd been asked a few times to do it, even when I was on Emmerdale, but I'd thought I was too young then. Then, I thought I would do it and someone said that Blake Publishing were interested, so I decided I'd do it properly, and that's how it all came about.
So once you've made that decision do you have to sit down and think 'shall I be really honest about this?' Do you have to call people and warn them they may be in the book?
Well, I didn't want to do a sort of glamour girl autobiography, naming and shaming and all that. But at the same time I didn't want to leave out people who had been important in my life. I am still in contact with a few of them, so I did mention what I was doing.
Part one of this interview with Claire King >> |
