EastEnders' legendary 'you ain't my mother' scene was changed at the last minute
EastEnders' legendary 'you ain't my mother' scene was changed at the last minute
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Jessie Wallace has revealed that she changed the way in which her line was delivered in the iconic EastEnders scene in which she revealed she was Zoe Slater’s mother rather than her sister. And the actress, 53, has called for a return for Zoe - played by Michelle Ryan - who hasn’t been seen in Walford since 2005. Speaking on co-star Lacey Turner’s new podcast, on the eve of the soap’s 40th anniversary next month, Jessie revealed just how the scene played out on the day it was filmed in 2001.
In the story, Zoe is fed up of being bossed around by Kat, yelling at her outside The Queen Vic: “You can’t tell me what to do - you ain’t my mother,” to which Kat explodes: “Yes I am!”. Jessie explained she didn’t think that the three words would work if said quietly, which is how he’d been told to deliver them. “Tony Jordan had written it as I whispered it and I was like, ‘no, if I've been holding this for 18 years, I'm going to scream it out’.”.
Actress Michelle was last seen departing Albert Square four years after leaning that Kat had, in fact, given birth to her. On her podcast We Started Here Lacey, 36, suggested to Jessie: “I’d love it if she came back. Would you? ‘Hello Mum’. Oh, that's given me goosebumps,” Jessie agreed. “Can we make that happen? I think it'd be great. I think it would be lovely.”.
Thinking back to the extraordinary TV moment, which was watched by 19 million viewers at the time, Jessie said it had been an incredibly tough storyline to film. “I was so honoured that they gave that storyline for me to carry - but it was really hard,” she said. “And this is back in the day when we used to get like sackfuls of fan mail, and the majority were teenage girls that were going through the same thing, that 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.”.
