Former Hollyoaks icon Annie Wallace has revealed which co-star she found ‘difficult’ in an Instagram live.
The Sally St. Claire actress, 59, appeared in the Channel 4 soap for 9 years before being axed as part of cost-cutting measures.
This week, the long-running drama reduced its weekly episodes from five to three, with around 20 cast members departing in order to facilitate the change.
There’s been some huge losses – alongside Annie, Stephanie Waring, who played Cindy Cunningham and Ellis Hollins, who played her brother Tom were also let go after being part of the show for most of its 30 year history.
Action will sky-rocket one year into the future from Monday, a device used in part to explain some of the noticeable absences.
Unfortunately, Annie’s character Sally falls victim to that, and her final scenes have already aired. When we next catch up with the villagers, she will have moved on for pastures new.
Last week, she exclusively told Metro.co.uk: ‘The last filming days were really quite intense. My last day was July 31, so I’ve had a month to decompress – and I have decompressed. I was very upset. There is no lying about it. It’s my career and I love the show.’
Following her low-key final exit, she went on to host an Instagram live video for her 18,800 followers.
Questions flew in about her future, her favourite moments and her co-stars – with one in particular raising an eyebrow with Annie.
‘Did you like working with David Easter?’ asked one fan, to which she sat back and sighed.
Easter has a wealth of soap roles under his belt; Pat Hancock in Brookside, Family Affairs’ Pete Callan, plus recurring and guest roles in Doctors, Holby City, The Bill and Emmerdale.
He also starred as Mac Nightingale in ‘Oaks for four years from 2015.
As Annie took in the question, she repeated it before replying: ‘Errr… David could be difficult at times.’
‘But I enjoyed working with him because he played such an evil character.’
As she appeared to be lost for words, she shook her head and said: ‘But yeah, yeah. Great character!’
Mac arrived as the new landlord of The Dog in the Pond, and also the secret husband of Cindy, who had married him off-screen during a bipolar episode.
The violent and cheating character was entwined in a number of high-profile storylines, including one which saw him suffering from locked-in syndrome – meaning he was unable to move his body – after an explosion at the school.
We also saw a series of flashbacks which exposed him as being a homophobe. When he found out that his sixteen year old son James (played in the present day by Gregory Finnegan) was gay, he paid sex worker Donna-Marie Quinn (Lucy-Jo Hudson) to sleep with him, causing her to conceive their son Romeo (Owen Warner).
In 2019, he was killed off after being poisoned by villainous Breda McQueen (Moya Brady).
Hollyoaks continues Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at 7am on Channel 4 streaming, with a linear broadcast 12 hours later on E4.
