Hollyoaks star Jennifer Metcalfe says her character’s bowel cancer storyline is acting as therapy after bottling up childhood grief following the loss of her dad to the disease. Viewers found out last night that much-loved character Mercedes McQueen is fighting for her life – 25 years after Jen’s dad died. She says: “I was 15 when my dad died and I never really dealt with it, never knew how to.
It probably would have helped to talk about it and take time out, but when I got offered two weeks off school I was like, ‘Why? I don’t need it, I’ll go back.’ “So doing this storyline has given me the chance to finally deal with it. All these years on, I’ve done some raw grieving.
Doing the scenes has been like therapy I’ve needed for 25 years.” Tackling such a personal topic has challenged the actress in ways her previous scripts have never done before. There have been many times where Jennifer has been uncertain whether she could make it through a scene.
She admits: “I’ve had first-hand experience with the emotion of this issue and find it difficult talking about it. “When I first started doing the storyline, it was tough. I had to take myself into a room and go onto set when I was ready.
“When I first got on set, I didn’t know how I was going to do it – there are a lot of waves of emotion and I could barely do a scene without getting choked up.” In the end it was her dad himself that gave Jennifer the push to make him proud. She says: “I was .