Samantha Womack "wasn’t planning" to leave ‘EastEnders’.
The 44-year-old actress – who was known for playing Ronnie Mitchell in the long-running soap – has admitted she was "devastated" when she found out she was being written out of the soap earlier this year alongside her on-screen sister Rita Simons (who played Roxy Mitchell) because she thought she had a future in Walford.
Speaking on a forthcoming episode of ‘John Bishop In Conversation With…’, she said: "I was devastated because I wasn’t planning to leave.
"I was waiting to meet the new producer [Sean O’Connor], I’d heard he wanted to take it back to kind of reality, less murders. So I met him the first time and he went: ‘She’s too dark, so we’re gonna kill her.’ And I was like ‘What?!’ So yeah, I had to drown myself. That was really hard, having to kill someone that I loved."
Shortly after she left the show, Sean was dropped from the programme due to plummeting viewing figures and replaced with the current executive producer John Yorke – who previously worked on the soap – but she doesn’t hold resentment for him.
She said previously: "I’m devastated that they were killed. My heart goes out to him (sacked producer) and everyone struggling in the show. It’s full of talented hard working people so I hope they get back on their feet. I have worked in every time of job whether it’s TV, film or musical comedy and I thought I’d be prepared. It’s not just that, it’s also the fact that each time you get a new writer or director on-board they’re always trying to change the character so it’s trying to hold on to that and fight tooth and nail to keep her authenticity and that’s no easy feat – that probably why I was killed."
And Samantha doesn’t think Sean is completely to blame for the viewing flop.
She added: "I’m always wary of making one single person a scapegoat. Ideas are brought to him too. It’s easy to pin the blame on one person, I don’t think it’s helpful."
Samantha Womack didn’t want to leave EastEnders
