Daily Express

But now she and the boss of the hit Sunday night show don’t talk any more

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later, Tom, 44, suddenly left the mother of his two children before embarking on a relationsh­ip and later setting up home with Jessica.

He had reportedly already sent out invitation­s for a surprise 40th birthday party for his wife, Kerry Bradley, when he dramatical­ly cancelled everything and announced their 20-year relationsh­ip was over.

The pair moved in together in 2013 and married in 2015. She fell pregnant in 2018 but only announced it in January and gave birth the following month.

Call The Midwife, in which Jessica, 37, appeared as popular nurse Jenny Lee until 2014, has been an incredible breeding ground for young actors. Others who have found fame in the show include Helen George, Bryony Hannah and Laura Main among others.

But in barbed comments, the show’s writer and executive producer Heidi Thomas recently admitted she would happily axe actors who use her show as a launch pad to Hollywood.

Heidi, 65, said recently: “Writers don’t have control over whether people stay or not. And when young ladies come on the show and then three years later they decide it’s time to go to Hollywood every time, it’s like a stab through the heart.

“I now know the signs and when I see those signs I think, ‘Oh Hollywood beckons’, and I start to move them to one side. I have become quite ruthless about it.”

Jessica, who left the BBC drama in 2014, before featuring in the Daniel Radcliffe movie, Woman In Black, tells me that she and Heidi are no longer communicat­ing.

She said: “I don’t think Midwife will ever need me back but it has been a great springboar­d. It’s been a long time since Call The Midwife and I am not in touch with Heidi. I am still friends with all the girls and Bryony (who plays Cynthia Miller) lives really close to me and has kids too.”

Jessica’s career has gone from strength to strength since leaving Midwife, after her character Jenny resigned to take a job in a hospice.

One of her first major roles was in Jed Mercurio’s BBC police drama Line Of Duty.

But on joining AC-12, the fictional police department, in series two as the highly ambitious Detective Constable Georgia Trotman, she was on screen for only 45 minutes. Having raced to hospital with her partner, Steve Arnott (Martin Compston), to protect a seriously-injured witness, the pair found him being murdered by an assassin disguised as a nurse.

The plot saw Georgia witness the assassinat­ion before being unceremoni­ously thrown out of the fifth-floor window to her death.

Jessica went on to appear in Fortitude in 2015 followed by a role in the BBC’s The Last Post as Alison Lathwaite, the alcoholic

 ??  ?? CALL THE MIDWIFE STARS: From left, Jessica Raine, Helen George and Bryony Hannah
CALL THE MIDWIFE STARS: From left, Jessica Raine, Helen George and Bryony Hannah
 ??  ?? BAPTISTE: Tchéky Karyo as the eponymous TV detective and Jessica as Genevieve
BAPTISTE: Tchéky Karyo as the eponymous TV detective and Jessica as Genevieve

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