As ex-Larkins star Sabrina goes jogging, is ITV running out of time to replace her?
TV CHIEFS on The Darling Buds Of May remake are facing a race against time to rescue the second series after Sabrina Bartlett, who plays Mariette Larkin, sensationally quit the cast.
Filming is set to start on a new season of The Larkins at the end of April and it is understood a replacement actress has yet to be found to play the character that launched Catherine Zeta-Jones’s career.
Sources claim the former Bridgerton star’s shock announcement that she would not be returning to the ITV show caught producers by surprise.
Ms Bartlett had previously said she loved working on the comedy-drama series where she starred alongside Tok Stephen, who plays Mariette’s boyfriend, Cedric ‘Charley’ Charlton.
In an interview promoting the series last autumn, she even described her colleagues on the show as ‘family’.
Last week, the 30-year-old actress failed to crack a smile when she went for a bracing run along the beach at Hastings in East Sussex, close to where her parents live.
Dressed in a black tracksuit with her hair tied back and earphones plugged into her phone, Miss Bartlett appeared rather downcast just two weeks after it emerged she had quit the show. Her representative confirmed her departure, citing scheduling clashes.
But a source suggested the actress had left following a disagreement on the set, which was described as sensitive. There has been no announcement about her working commitments.
A source close to The Larkins, which stars Bradley Walsh and Joanna Scanlan in the roles of Pop and Ma Larkin, said: ‘Filming is due to begin in a little over six weeks, but the latest is that Sabrina hasn’t been replaced yet.
‘It really has turned into quite a mess. It is all very sad, especially because everyone loved Sabrina and she absolutely enjoyed working on the show so much.
‘She would shout about it at every opportunity, she would post on social media to try to get people to watch it. Whoever they get to take her place has big shoes to fill.’
The disagreement on set is also believed to have been a factor in Miss Bartlett leaving her agent, the London-based Independent Talent Group. She has been erased from its website.
The Daily Mail revealed last month that Ms Bartlett had quit The Larkins, which aired last year and often drew an audience of around five million viewers.
Speaking ahead of the series’s launch last year, she described the cast as a ‘wild family’.
She added: ‘I felt very at home with everybody, sort of like falling down the rabbit hole and having a family overnight.
‘After such a hard year for everybody, I think even being on set at all was such a privilege.’
Last November, The Mail on Sunday revealed that Ms Bartlett had split from her boyfriend of three years, Tom Greaves.
She has previously starred in ITV’s Victoria and the Netflix hit Bridgerton, in which she played Siena Rosso, as well as HBO’s Game Of Thrones.
‘It has turned into quite a mess. It is all very sad’