Shona Mcgarty
“Whitney is like Gollum from Lord Of The Rings!”
To be honest, I always preferred Westlife to Blue!” giggles Eastenders star Shona Mcgarty, aka Whitney, when we quiz her on what it’s like to have pop star
Lee Ryan – who plays Woody – as an on-screen love interest. “Lee wasn’t best pleased when I told him that! But it’s been great fun working with him – he’s always singing on set and has been known to belt out All Rise! Sometimes
I’ll join in and we’ll do a little duet.”
It may be fun and games behind the scenes, but life is no bed of roses for Whitney and Woody this week – after Moose, an old pal of Whit’s soon-tobe-ex-hubby Lee, turns up and causes trouble! So what brings him to Walford?
“He just arrives out of the blue – Whitney doesn’t even know that he’s coming,” explains Shona. “She’s a bit puzzled about what he’s doing there, but Mick is happy to see him and they get on well, so Whitney enjoys that.”
Mick may be pleased to see Moose, but Woody isn’t! It doesn’t escape his notice that his fiancée is paying a lot of attention to Moose, and the green-eyed monster soon rears its ugly head.
“Whitney finds Moose hilarious and laughs at all of his jokes, which Woody doesn’t like at all!” Shona tells us. “But it’s only when Woody starts asking things like, ‘Why is he here?’, and,
‘Will he be staying for long?’ that Whitney realises that he’s jealous – and she tells him to stop being silly.”
However, when Moose lets slip to Woody that Whitney’s divorce papers have just come through from Lee, all hell breaks loose for the couple.
“Whitney actually only receives the papers that morning – she wants to tell Woody herself, but Moose beats her to it,” sighs Shona. “At this point, Whitney sees a side of Woody that she’s never seen before. He’s jealous, and I think she almost finds him a little bit controlling. He’s quite needy, too, and she really doesn’t like that.”
Quite frankly, we’re not surprised that the pair’s relationship has hit the rocks already, considering how quickly they rushed into their engagement.
And Shona has a few words of caution for her naive alter ego…
“I would tell her to slow down,” she advises. “Whitney needs to just be alone and get to know herself better – how can anybody else love her if she doesn’t love herself? Whitney has always been the type of person who needs to feel appreciated and loved because she doesn’t like being on her own. But I’d like to see her have some fun!”
Sadly, there hasn’t been much fun for Whitney at the Vic recently, after Linda discovered that she’d shared some steamy snogs with her hubby Mick! And Shona wishes things had turned out differently between the two women.
“It’s quite sad really, because Linda always saw Whitney as the girlie daughter she never had,” the actress reminds us. “But Whitney is genuinely sorry for what she’s done. She had a moment of madness, and all she wants is for Linda to forgive her. She’s trying to make things right, but she doesn’t blame Linda for not forgiving her straight away. She knows that their relationship will never be the way it was before.”
And Linda isn’t the only friend Whitney’s losing, as her best mate Lauren is due to leave the Square in the next couple of months. Yet Shona already has a new close pal lined up for Whit…
“I’ve always loved her friendship with Stacey,” grins the star, who’s been playing Whitney since 2008. “It is sad that Lauren is going, because her and Whitney are such good mates. Whit is going to need someone else to talk to, so I’d definitely like to see more scenes between her and Stacey. And I’d also like Whitney to get her feistiness back – she needs some backbone in 2018, and to stand up for herself a bit more!”
Whit finds Woody quite needy – she doesn’t like that at all