Jennifer Metcalfe is glad to be back filming ‘Hollyoaks’ with her friends after a "difficult" and "isolating" maternity leave.
The 35-year-old actress recently reprised her role as Mercedes McQueen in the Channel 4 soap, and Friday night’s E4 episode featured her alter-ego reunited with first husband and now-fiance Russ Owen (Stuart Manning) in Magaluf, where celebrates her hen do.
While Jennifer enjoyed filming in the Majorca resort town, she admitted it was "hard work", and she also had a tough time after giving birth to her and ‘Geordie Shore’ star Greg Lake’s son Daye in June 2017.
She said: "It’s hard work [filming in Magaluf] because you don’t have your siestas and you don’t have your beer an hour, so it’s hard.
"But because maternity leave was so difficult because my little boy never kept still and for about six months he screamed his life away and he didn’t sleep very good.
"So, for me to be out in that setting working with all my friends again … obviously I love my little boy, I love the time with him.
"I was in Newcastle as well. I made a couple of friends up there but it wasn’t like being at home.
"And I realised being up there that Liverpool is my home. I’ve been there 12 years, so it [was] quite isolating. I’ve been based back in Liverpool now."
Jennifer had to slip into a swimsuit to film Mercedes’ sun-kissed Spanish hen do, but she didn’t mind donning the beachwear just 12 months after giving birth, admitting she was just pleased to be shooting the soap again.
Speaking on ‘Good Morning Britain’, she added: "I didn’t really care – I was just happy to be part of it all again. I was like, ‘Put me in whatever.’
"It was so much fun going out there with all my friends who I had not seen properly for a year, having three nights of sleep, and several glasses after work in a beautiful setting – I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
"I’ve been loving it ever since. I’ve been back two months now.
"Mercedes is also the heart of the mischief and the drama, so when they said we were going to Magaluf I was made up. I’m made up with the story."
Jennifer Metcalfe talks ‘difficult’ maternity leave
