“Georgie gets herself into trouble!”
MICHELLE KEEGAN TELLS US WHY HER ALTER EGO CAN’T RESIST A CALL FOR HELP…
Hearts were shattered at the end of Our Girl’s Nepal tour storyline last year, when special forces officer Elvis Harte was blasted off a rooftop by a bomb and died in the arms of his fiancée, Lance Corporal Georgie Lane. As the series returns this week for the first of eight episodes, Georgie is resuming her duties after compassionate leave – but it’s clear Elvis’ fate is still weighing heavily on her.
“She had six months off after Elvis’ death,” explains Michelle Keegan, who plays Georgie. “Then she comes to meet Captain James and 2 Section again, so she puts her head back into work and focuses on that. She buries her head in the sand a lot and pretends everything’s fine, but deep down she’s heartbroken.”
Viewers were very vocal in their reaction to Elvis’ death, and Michelle was thrilled people cared so much about Georgie and Elvis’ romance – and she hopes they’ll stay invested in what happens to Georgie as she tries to move on with life.
“I think the audience will miss him,” she muses. “As those four episodes [of last series] went out, I was working in Malaysia. When it was on TV, I was in bed – it was six in the morning – and I went on social media just to see what people were saying. It was a good reaction – a sad reaction, but a good one. Now this series is about moving forward and Georgie’s life and grief.”
Georgie’s return to duty sees her with her unit in Nigeria, where it’s working to train local forces in the fight against terror – and Georgie is helping to train local medics. But things soon escalate when 2 Section has to deal with a group of mercenaries, and Georgie is again in danger.
“She always goes off!” grins Michelle. “She gets herself into trouble, but she wants to do good. She’s naive, but keen to make a difference, and I think she believes she can help at any point. Whether it’s about a child or a family, she wants to help and sometimes doesn’t stay in the Army guidelines. She likes to live outside the box, but I love that about her.”
There’s an aspect of playing Georgie that Michelle doesn’t love quite so much, though: the training scenes where her character tackles the assault courses, as she’s not quite as good at them as Georgie is…
“I hated it!” she reveals. “I was always last – and on screen I can’t always be last, so it was embarrassing! Shalom [Brune-franklin], who plays Maisie, is quite active – and I had to be like, ‘Can you not leave me? Because if you run off and I’m left behind, it’s going to look really bad!’”