The BIG ISSUE
CHELSEA HALFPENNY TELLS US THE NEW SERIES OF CASUALTY KICKS OFF WITH A TIMELY STORY…
Casualty returns to our screens with a trip to France this week – as Alicia, Dylan, David and Louise travel to a refugee camp to offer medical assistance. But when we catch up with Chelsea Halfpenny (Alicia) to ask how it was filming on the Continent, she answers with an embarrassed laugh.
“Well, we didn’t actually go to France – we filmed it all in Wales!” she reveals. “But the crew went out to Calais to see it for real, so they could recreate the camp. It’s actually pretty shocking to know that’s how people are living. It felt quite realistic to us – it’s definitely not fiction.”
The dramatic two-parter sees Dylan in a moral dilemma as he bonds with two young refugees, while Alicia finds herself catching the eye of a handsome volunteer. Chelsea explains all…
What spurs Alicia and her colleagues to help at the refugee camp?
They find out that Cal was interested in it before he passed away. So this prompts Alicia and Louise to kind of do it in his honour, and all go and help out.
But when they get there, it’s not what they’re expecting…
Exactly! They think they’ll just arrive and help with general illnesses. But on the way, they see a lot of people who have attempted to get on a boat to England, and have been washed up on the shore. Some of them have drowned and some are in a very bad way.
How does Alicia cope?
Well, everyone is pretty much stunned, especially Alicia because she’s still quite new to all of this. Working on a patient in the hospital is nerve-wracking enough, let alone being in France and not having all your equipment and support. Some of the injuries are just horrific, so I think for Alicia, she’s in pure shock. Her and the team all get straight into doctor mode and try to do the best they can.
Things begin to look up for Alicia when she meets Cameron, though…
He’s young and good-looking, and she warms to him because he volunteers at the camp a lot, which is obviously an attractive thing. Alicia is looking for some sort of light relief, with all these horrific things going on around her – but she kind of takes it the wrong way and gets distracted by Cameron. I think she tries to impress him, and it doesn’t quite work!
So has she moved on from Ethan after everything that’s happened?
She definitely still has feelings for Ethan – it just didn’t end up the way it should and they didn’t really get a chance. I think
I’m a bit of a soppy romantic, as I always want things to go right for people. George [Rainsford, aka Ethan] and I worked together building up their relationship – so I definitely would like to see it work out for them in the end! Obviously a lot of stuff is going on for Ethan, and maybe they’re just not ready for each other yet.
This is very different from last series’ opening episode, which was the stunt with the helicopter crash. Was it nice to do something a bit more issue-led?
Yes, it’s good to work on things that are relevant – in the hope that it will make people more aware or help them with that kind of issue. And also it was nice to get out of the studio as well. Filming the episodes almost felt like doing a mini-film!
What else can we expect to happen for Alicia in this new series?
Well, I hope that we see her develop more of a backbone, and just concentrate on her career. That’s what I think you’ll see in these episodes – all the stuff with Cameron and trying to help out at the camp makes her realise just how important her career is to her. She definitely wants to be taken more seriously.
So she’ll be trying to prove herself ?
We’ll see Alicia working harder to move up the ranks, which is really exciting for me as an actress, because I find all the medical stuff like the big operation and emergency scenes really difficult. It’s not just the acting – it’s the pronouncing all the words and making it look real! So it’s very challenging, but in a good way. That’s what is so different and exciting about being in Casualty. You come in, then go home at the end of the day – and you feel like you’ve done a proper hard day’s work!
Some of the refugees are in a very bad way – Alicia is in shock