EastEnders star Jessie Wallace has called for the return of her character Kat Slater’s daughter Zoe in the soap.
Jessie has been confirmed as the first guest on her co-star Lacey Turner’s podcast We Started Here, with the episode being released on all podcast platforms tomorrow.
Each week, Lacey will be joined by guests from the TV and film industry, both in front of and behind the camera, who all began their careers working in soap operas – and you can listen to the podcast’s trailer now.
In the first episode, Lacey talks to Jessie, who has played Kat on and off for almost 25 years, about the scenes she shared with Michelle Ryan, who played Zoe between 2000 and 2005.
“You’ve had some really iconic storylines,” Lacey said in the episode. “The Kat and Zoe one… I’d love it if she came back. Would you?”
“I think it’d be great,” Jessie replied. “I think it would be lovely. Can we make that happen? Wouldn’t it be great?”
Jessie also spoke about tackling one of the most harrowing storylines in the soap’s history, with Kat being sexually abused by her uncle Harry as a child. This abuse led to her falling pregnant and giving birth to Zoe aged only 14.
“It was hard,” Jessie recalled. “It was really hard. And this is back in the day when we used to get sacks full of fan mail, and the majority were teenage girls who were going through or had been through the same thing.
“They were relating to Kat and coming to me for help. But I’m an actor and it had to be passed on to the NSPCC, which was really tough. So the impact it made… I was so honoured that they gave me that storyline to carry.”
In the episode, Jessie also discusses how she started her acting career and why the character of Kat is so popular with viewers – and she and Lacey share their love of being part of the iconic Slater family.
