Samantha Womack wants to go back into comedy.
Samantha Womack
The 43-year-old actress will bow out of 'EastEnders' as Ronnie Mitchell early next year and is hoping her permanent departure will make room for a revival of 'Babes in the Wood' - the sitcom she starred in during the 90s - as she'd love nothing more than to sink her teeth into something light-hearted following nine years in the downbeat soap.
Speaking to the Daily Star newspaper, she said: "A lot of things I've been attracted to have been the opposite of Ronnie. I was looking at re-runs of 'Babes in the Wood' the other day, and everyone is saying 'It's the comeback season, you should bring it back.' I was watching online thinking, 'Yeah, it would be nice to bring it back and do it again.' Mainly I just need to remember what it's like to be outside of the 'EastEnders' family."
The blonde beauty told bosses of the soap that she was planning to quit earlier this year but, although she's looking forward to shooting the dramatic bloody scenes that will air in the new year, she never expected them to kill her off.
She explained: "It's a job - it has to have an end at some time. I've done many things over the years, but I never had the opportunity to have complete freedom. It's a strange time for me and it'll be even stranger filming the last scenes."
Samantha's on-screen sister Rita Simons - who plays Roxy Mitchell - is also expected to die in the horrific scenes next year and they'll both miss working with one another as they've spent almost a decade together portraying the double act.
She said: "I've probably spent more time with that one individual than I have with any of my family working together 14 hours away, and we've never had an argument."
Details on Ronnie and Roxy's grisly end are being kept tightly under wraps but it seems their deaths won't be without fight as they'll reportedly take their last breath under water.
A source said recently: "Their [Ronnie and Roxy] exit is one of the big dates in the soap calendar. The swimming pool scene they'reworking on will be huge and a real talking point for 'EastEnders' fans. It's going to be a grisly and gruesome death.
"From the minute it was revealed they [Samantha and Rita] were leaving, and even before, the writers have been trying to think of a brilliant way to kill them off."
It's not yet known how the siblings end up in water but Ronnie (Samantha) has certainly racked up her fair share of enemies over the years after she snatched Kat and Alfie Moon's (Jessie Wallace and Shane Richie) baby son following the traumatic cot death of her child James Branning in 2012, murdered her sister's boyfriend Carl White (Daniel Coonan) in 2013, bribed her husband Charlie Cotton (Declan Bennett) to leave Walford and locked Arthur 'Fat Boy' Chubb in the boot of a car that was subsequently crushed at a scrap yard last year.
And Roxy (Rita) has her own fair share of problems as she's recently got herself caught up in drug dealing and was almost raped by Dean Wicks (Matt Di Angelo), who was arrested after the incident but later freed following a not guilty verdict.
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