Joy Joyner has revealed why she quit EastEnders.
The actress has played Tanya Branning on and off since 2006 and has now revealed why she has to keep leaving – to save her face.
She told how saving her face from what’s known as the ‘Walford frown’ means she cannot stay around.
“If I come out of a drama I always try to look for a comedy,” she told the Sunday Mirror.
”You can’t just do it constantly for years in misery, otherwise you end up with a Walford frown.
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“It gets to you.”
Jo last appeared on the soap in January when Tanya attended the funeral of her daughter Abi Branning.
She was briefly seen in a car outside the graveyard before leaving for good.
Viewers have been confused about her exit after she returned at Christmas to expose her scheming ex Max Branning.
The argument and ending of his grand plan to destroy Walford in revenge for no-one wanting to help him when he was framed for Lucy Beale’s murder led to him wanting to take his own life.
But in a heartbreaking twist as his daughters Abi and Lauren tried to stop him from jumping off the Queen Vic’s roof, they fell instead.
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Lauren survived with serious injuries but Abi later died in hospital and never met her baby daughter.
However it appears that neither Tanya nor Lauren have attempted to adopt Abi’s baby as Max is currently back in Walford in a sham marriage with Tanya’s recovering drug addict sister Rainie Cross trying to convince social services he is the right man for the job.
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