It has not been a good week for Samantha Womack on EastEnders. The fallout from Ronnie Branning's cot-death baby-swap storyline has seen the actor all but pelted with rotten eggs by members of the public unable to distinguish fact from fiction.
I know how she feels. As Chrissie Watts, I was overwhelmed by the public reaction to her character and her crimes. Bullying her husband Den's young mistress into aborting his love child, murdering him in a fit of pique (right), burying him under the local pub, framing an innocent bystander and going slowly mad with grief, I became a national talking point. Admittedly I didn't get the rotten eggs, more congratulatory letters for bumping off one of soap's most memorable cads. But it could have gone either way.
During my career I have lost count of the dastardly deeds I've committed on stage. I've been party to young princes murdered in Shakespeare, bodily mutilations in Jacobean tragedies and a particularly disturbing Edward Bond play in which a newborn baby gets stoned to death. Unspeakable acts are played out nightly on stage, film and television, yet do not get half the reaction that EastEnders consistently provokes. Such is the power of this programme.
And there's the rub. As an EastEnders actor you crave a good storyline and hope to find yourself at the centre of a meaty plot. In this brilliant show, chances are you will. But if, on occasion, the public turns against a character or a story, the fallout for the actor is like nothing else. Mind you, whatever you think of this storyline, EastEnders has done what it does best. There is now a discussion raging about all aspects of cot death unheard for many years. That's got to be worth a few rotten eggs.
