Lisa Maxwell thinks the gruelling filming schedule on ‘The Bill’ may have contributed to her two miscarriages.
The 53-year-old actress starred in the police drama as Detective Inspector Samantha Nixon for more than seven years but has admitted she decided to quit the show to spend more time with her husband Paul Jessup and now-17-year-old daughter Beau after she lost two unborn babies – on separate occasions – in 2008.
Speaking to the Mirror Online, the actress said: "I left because I wanted to have my private life back.
"I’d had two miscarriages and my husband and I weren’t getting along great, and my daughter was three when I went in it and ten or something when I left. You never really know why you have a miscarriage, but you can always look back and blame it on something. I don’t think it was because I was working too hard, but what I needed to do was to face up to what had happened and deal with it, because the danger for me – as with anything bad that ever happens in life – is I work through it… which isn’t necessarily functional. Our relationship was rocky. We needed to regroup and I realised then it was time for me to jack in the job and come home."
After she turned her back on the show, Lisa was snapped up as an anchor on the ‘Loose Women’ panel but has admitted she didn’t see it as a "job" but merely something she enjoyed doing.
She said "Being a Loose Woman is not a job. For me, it was always something you do because you do something else. ‘Loose Women for me, as a mum – finishing at 1.30pm after a live show and then having the day to be a mum and wifey – was heavenly and just what I needed. But it made me very lazy, so I did that for way too long. I had the time of my life getting drunk and misbehaving with a load of old birds, it was bloody marvellous. It was money for old rope and a real light relief."
‘The Bill’ ran for 26 years until 2010 and, although the cast aren’t planning to make anymore episodes, it has recently been announced that the small screen will start airing re-runs.
Lisa Maxwell left The Bill after two miscarriages
