Her character Ronnie Mitchell was sensationally killed off in EastEnders New Year’s Day episode and now Samantha Womack has revealed how she REALLY felt about the way she left the show.
Appearing on This Morning alongside Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield to promote her new stage show The Addams Family, Sam opened up about leaving the character she played for almost 10 years behind.
Ronnie drowned, weighted down by her wedding dress, after diving into a swimming pool to save her sister Roxy Mitchell, who’d jumped in and suffered a heart attack.
Both sisters died and fans were outraged that two of their favourite characters couldn’t ever return.
Show boss Sean O’Connor revealed at the RTS awards this week that he wanted their ending to be “operatic” and that there was no way people like Ronnie and Roxy could just drive off in the back of a taxi.
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But after the soap aired her exit, Sam took to Twitter to tell her followers she was “honestly broken” from the “darkest year ever”.
I'm sorry I can't respond to any comments..I'm honestly broken. An appropriate end to the darkest year ever.@OfficialRita @RealScottMaslen 💔
— Sam Womack (@Sam_Womack) January 1, 2017
Explaining to Phil and Holly why she’d been so upset, she said:
“[After] 9 years, that person’s really close to you – the character, I mean. And the family’s really close to you.
“So having to say goodbye to everyone is really, really hard. The best way is just to launch into a new job.”
And talking about how she felt about Ronnie dying rather than going off to start a new life in Ongar as had been planned for her character, she laughed:
“I wouldn’t have wanted to end up in Ongar. No offence to the people of Ongar!
“I just think if a character ends up anywhere, wherever it may be, it’s not a punchy ending. So it was definitely punchy.”
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About to star as Morticia in The Addams Family, Sam admitted she hasn’t forgotten her last family, the Mitchells, and she still speaks to Rita Simons, who played her sister, Roxy, six times a day!
“I speak to Rita about six times a day,” she said. “You can’t give up something like that. We were together for such a long time and she feels like my sister still, so I’m grateful actually to have come away with that – the most amazing friend ever.”