“I was shaking after filming Kathy’s scenes with Willmott-brown!”
Gillian Taylforth looks back on the story that shaped her soap career – and tells us which Hollywood hero she’d love to come to Kathy’s rescue…
Kathy’s shock at laying eyes on Willmott-brown this week (see p4) required little acting from Gillian Taylforth – as the first she knew about the villain’s Walford comeback was when she bumped into returning star William Boyde on set!
“I knew that something was going on, since our producer at the time had given an interview saying that there was a big story in the works for Kathy,” recalls Gillian, as Inside Soap joins her at the Eastenders studios in Elstree for a catch-up. “There was a code name in the scripts, but I had no idea what it meant until I came in one day and saw Will just sitting there! It was a lovely shock, and so nice to meet him again after all these years.”
In the time that Willmott-brown has been away, Kathy has been to hell and back with the men in her life. And Gillian reckons that a lot of her character’s misfortunes stem from that awful night in 1988 when the Dagmar boss attacked her.
“Jacqueline Jossa [who plays Lauren] recently found the video clip on Youtube for me, and we watched it,” she shares. “For its time, the episode was quite eerie and frightening, and seeing it again sent shivers down my spine. I remember doing those scenes and feeling quite upset about the whole storyline. It was such an ordeal for Kathy to go through, and I felt very depressed by it. Obviously we did it, and Will and I got through it.
“In revisiting it, I did wonder what
Eastenders were going to do,” continues Gillian. “However, the episode you’re about to see is wonderfully written by Rob Gittins, and was really brilliant to film. I was shaking by the end of it, but Will was fantastic and a great support.”
Kathy’s rape is still considered one of the most hard-hitting stories ever seen on Eastenders. The episode became headline news, with actors Gillian and William at the eye of a huge media storm – and few soap storylines have received such a strong reaction.
“When Will came back and I asked how he was feeling, he admitted he was a bit nervous,” explains Gillian. “After the initial story aired, everyone was talking about it – and poor Will had all these people in the street shouting,
‘Leave Kathy alone!’ at him. So he said to me, ‘I’m going to have it all again’. Things have changed a lot since then, though. With so many channels these days, you don’t get 32 million people watching, and there have been similar storylines on other soaps in the meantime. So I told him not to worry.” Given their turbulent history on screen, it’s sweet when Gillian tells us how brilliantly she and William get on after the cameras stop rolling. “I hadn’t seen him for years, so it’s been lovely working with him again,” she enthuses. “You would never have known that he’d been away from the role for so long, as he just got straight back into it with that wonderful voice of his. I swoon!” Revisiting Kathy’s history has brought back great memories of Gillian’s early days on Eastenders, and she remembers them like they were yesterday.
“It’s a joy working with the old people, especially if I do scenes with Letitia Dean [Sharon], Steve Mcfadden [Phil] and Adam Woodyatt [Ian],” ref lects the actress. “When we first started on the show, we used to go out together all the time and really bonded, but now that we’ve grown older and had families, everyone has their own lives to lead.