Hollyoaks’ Ayden Callaghan asked bosses to cut him out of his character’s heartbreaking stillborn scenes last year.
The 35-year-old actor was terrified he’d lose his job after he asked producers if they could erase him from the emotional storyline, which saw his alter-ego Joe Roscoe and his girlfriend Mercedes McQueen (Jennifer Matcalfe) tragically lose their baby, because he and his fiancée had been through the same ordeal in real life just a few months prior.
Ayden’s lover Sarah Jane Honeywell opened up about the terrible situation on her blog, writing: "I had just started to feel ok about it all [the stillbirth] when we got a bombshell.
"Ayden was going to be involved in a storyline on the soap he works at, where he would be the father of a stillborn [one word] baby and it would be filming around the time I was due to give birth. It’s wonderful that soap operas cover the heartbreaking, barely talked about subject of stillbirth.
"If it’s done well it can help all of us deal with it – but of all the actors in the show, I wished with all my heart that it didn’t have to be Ayden that was doing it. He didn’t know if he would be sacked, blacklisted and he certainly knew that he would lose money – but he loved me and the baby he hadn’t even met so much that he put his whole career on the line."
Despite suffering a devastating miscarriage in their first pregnancy, the loved-up couple – who have been dating since 2014 – went on to welcome their healthy baby boy Phoenix into the world 10 months ago.
Hollyoaks’ Ayden Callaghan asked to be cut from stillbirth scenes
