Pam St. Clement and Dame Barbara Windsor were both in tears after filming their final scenes together in ‘EastEnders’.
In May, Barbara said goodbye to her iconic soap character Peggy Mitchell in emotional suicide scenes which saw Peggy see Pam’s character Pat Butcher – who was killed off in 2012 – as an hallucination before she took her own life to save herself from a death from breast cancer.
Pam, 74, admits it was just as emotional for her and Peggy, 78, to shoot the sequence as it was for viewers to watch on BBC One.
Speaking during an appearance on ‘Loose Women’ on Thursday (23.06.16), she said: "It was very emotional afterwards, we both had a little tear drop, saying goodbye to Barbara as Peggy was … well I couldn’t turn that down."
Pam played Pat for 30 years on ‘EastEnders’ before her larger-than-life, big earring wearing alter ego was written out of the programme in a pancreatic cancer storyline.
Pam was very wary about returning to the role for Peggy’s exit, especially considering Pat was dead, but executive producer Dominic Treadwell-Collins assured her it was going to integral to Peggy’s decision to take her own life.
The veteran actress explained: "I did now that Dominic was keen to get Pat back but there was no way – I’d died on screen, that made it difficult. But Dom worked at it, Barbara presented him with the fact that she wanted to go out with a bang. He thought, ‘She wants to take her own life, she needs someone to help.’ Phil (Mitchell) couldn’t do it as it wouldn’t fit his character. Dom came up with the perfect idea. He was like, I know, ‘She’ll get strength from her old friend.’
"My concern was how are you going to bring her back? Is it going to be like, ‘Wooh (like a ghost).’ But we did it the way we did and gave the audience credit to work out what was going on, that this was in Peggy’s mind.
"The payoff was the letter that was left for Phil, in which she said ‘I was selfish for asking you to help but I wasn’t alone.’ "
Initially, Pam was disappointed that Pat was killed off because it meant she couldn’t return to Walford for the occasional storyline, but now she accepts it was the right way for her to go.
She said: "It’s all done and dusted now, that (being killed off) was probably for the best. I think if you do drift back then it dilutes the character a little but. It’s the old adage leave the audience wanting more."
Pam St. Clement and Barbara Windsor’s tears for Peggy
