First look at EastEnders legend Rita Simons in Hollyoaks as star joins rival soap
EASTENDERS legend Rita Simons looks thrilled to be back in soapland as she joins Hollyoaks.
The actress – who is best known for playing Roxy Mitchell in the BBC soap – is joining the Channel 4 soap full time.
The Sun can exclusively reveal that Rita is joining the soap full time and will be a regular character.
New pictures show Rita catching up with award-winning Hollyoaks casting boss Peter Hunt and picking up her scripts for her new role.
She will make her debut this autumn when she begins filming and it’s set to be an explosive debut.
A source said: “Rita’s casting is a stroke of genius.
“She’s got the acting chops to pull off anything the writers throw at her and she’s hugely popular with fans.
“Details of who she’s playing are a closely guarded secret but she’s set to cause chaos when she arrives in the village.”
Rita’s EastEnders character Roxy was killed off by soap bosses back in 2017, but earlier this year she made a shock return in a vision to daughter Amy Mitchell.
Actress Rita also revealed how she had refused to film her on-screen death, and simply held her breath in the hopes of returning to the soap full time later.
Rita told The Sun previously: “I got pulled aside a couple of days before filming the final scene by an exec, who I cannot name for legal reasons, who said to me, ‘There are a lot of people upstairs who don’t agree with this’.
“So what I was hearing was that people above did not agree. Why they couldn’t help, I don’t know. The politics there was so fraught at the time.
“And you have to let a producer do what they do and you have to let them find their way.
“They said, ‘If you want any chance at ever bringing Roxy back, you have to refuse to die’. So I have sat on this for six years and said nothing.
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It has made me feel like vomiting because I feel so guilty about it. Now is the time to say I played that scene as if I was holding my breath.
“Go back and watch it online and you will see next to nothing of me at all. I also refused to do the coffin scene. I was asked directly to my face and I refused point blank.
“It was really difficult because I was never a difficult actress or a diva but I had to do this thing to have any chance to protect me because I cared about Roxy.
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“I didn’t let anyone film me jump in the pool, so no one saw me drown. I didn’t do anything but hold my breath and stay absolutely still. That is all I did, which you can see.
“They must have thought I was insane, like, why was I doing it? But in my head I was filming a very different scene to the one the public think they saw or what they think they filmed. It made me feel sick that I couldn’t even tell Sam. I couldn’t tell anybody.”