EastEnders’ Patsy. A painful past. The secrets she hid…
Patsy Palmer’s return to EastEnders brought back memories of a former self she’d rather forget…
She’s back on the box as one of
EastEnders’ most iconic characters – Bianca Jackson – after a five-year break from the spotlight.
But at 47, Patsy Palmer has revealed she couldn’t be more different to the young single mum that stepped foot in Albert Square over two decades ago…
The now mum-of-four (to Charley, 27, Fenton, 19, Emilia, 18, and eight-year-old Bertie), based these days in California, admitted she didn’t tell BBC producers at the time that she already had a son, Charley, after landing her role in 1993.
‘The industry didn’t favour people with children, especially women. It was very hard back then… so I didn’t tell them until after I started working there and they were really shocked,’ she recalled in a recent interview.
And her swift and stratospheric rise to fame led the flame-haired young mum into a dark spiral of partying and drug use.
Patsy confessed, ‘I look back and think, I was so young. I’m grateful that I’m alive and got through it all… whatever’s gone on in the past is finished. I can’t even entertain it. It’s gone… I’ve done so much work around it, I’ve had so much therapy.’
‘Imagine if there were phones back then?’ she continued. ‘I was just so lucky I guess… I don’t think there are many people who have been through their teens and twenties and not partied hard.’
Reflecting on the turn-around from her partying days to living a life of yoga and meditation, Patsy admitted that her old life is pretty much a blur.
‘I can’t remember, it was so long ago. It was just awful. Terrible being in that kind of atmosphere. That’s not my life anymore,’ she said.
Twenty years on and happily married to second husband Richard Merkell, Patsy, it seems, is happy to see where life takes her next, saying, ‘I want to experience as many things as I can without worrying about what others think. That’s what stops us – fear. It’s stopped me doing lots of things over the years.’
She’s not in therapy any more, but Patsy wouldn’t rule it out, saying, ‘If I needed help, I’d ask for it. Self-love has to come first – yoga, meditation, walking, being around nature. Thankfully, I’m good. I’m good with myself right now.’
‘I’m just grateful I got through everything alive’