Tiff of success for child star

Maisie Smith joins Lorraine Stanley and Zack Morris to talk about the soap

EastEnders BBC1

Many EastEnders veterans have appeared on Secrets from the Square but this week Stacey Dooley is joined by someone who really can claim to have grown up in Walford – Maisie Smith.

The actress was just six years old when she first appeared in the soap as Ricky and Bianca’s daughter Tiffany. Here, she talks about what it was like to be a child on the Square and why she still draws inspiration from her younger self to play the character now.

She’s also joined by her on-screen husband and mother-in-law, Keegan and Karen, aka actors Zack Morris and Lorraine Stanley.

Although she may not have been a soap star since childhood, it turns out that Lorraine has a longer history on EastEnders than some fans may realise.

Before being cast as Karen, she played a young Mo in the one-off prequel Pat and Mo, and, more recently, cropped up as brassy rival landlady Thelma Bragg. Meanwhile, Zack talks about how his guest role as teenage tearaway Keegan led to the introduction of a whole new family, and shares his tap-dancing past. And Stacey gets a tour of the set where most of Walford’s dirty laundry gets aired, in more ways than one. This week’s classic episode is going back to Christmas 2014 – or, to be more precise, Boxing Day – as the Carters deal with the fallout from the revelation that Shirley is Mick’s mum, rather than his big sister.

It may not be quite as iconic as Zoe and Kat Slater’s not totally dissimilar “You ain’t my mother!” moment, but there’s still plenty of drama at the Vic – and at Dot’s, as Nick prepares to leave once again.