Coronation Street actress Samia Longchambon has opened up for the first time about a miscarriage she suffered while trying to expand her family with husband Sylvain.
The 37-year-old soap star has played Maria Connor on Corrie since 2000 - and has been married to 39-year-old Dancing On Ice skater Sylvain since 2016 after falling for each other on the set of the reality contest in 2013.
Earlier this year, Samia’s Corrie character was seen experiencing a miscarriage with boyfriend Gary Windass - who is played by Mikey North.
The scenes, which aired in January, were particularly difficult for Samia as she explains she endured the heartache of suffering the loss of an unborn child herself.
“I unfortunately went through it myself and miscarried,” Samia - who is mum to 20-year-old daughter Freya and four-year-old son Yves - told The Sun on Sunday’s Fabulous magazine.
“It was about five and a half years ago, before I got pregnant with Yves. I’ve never spoken about it before,” the actress said.
Explaining her experience, Samia revealed she sugared a “missed miscarriage” - which is when the body still thinks it is pregnant even after a miscarriage has occurred.
The actress said she didn’t experience any bleeding and had attended an early scan where doctors failed to find a heartbeat but told her to return a week later to “see if anything changed”.
The star said she did later require a procedure after it became apparent she had lost her baby - but astonishingly went straight to work afterwards to continue filming Coronation Street .
Samia now thinks she didn’t confront her own agony until soap writers unwittingly made her relive history when they wrote a miscarriage plot into Maria’s story line.
“Corrie didn’t know because I’d not told anyone at work about my miscarriage. They were quite shocked because I still went to work afterwards. In a way, [filming] was actually quite cathartic, because I don’t think I fully ever got to grips with what happened,” she said.
“That’s why, with this story line, I really wanted to get it right – for me and my own personal story, and also for all women that have been through it, watching it with their families,” she said.
Samia added that she hopes other women can be inspired to remain hopeful in the face of the agony of experiencing such a loss - pointing out that she fell pregnant with her son just three months after her own terrible loss.
The star welcomed her daughter in October 2000 when she was married to property developer Matt Smith - who she later divorced in 2011.
The star welcomed son Yves with French husband Sylvain in September 2015.
