Hollyoaks secretly changed Rita Simons’ role before her first scenes ever aired
Her role changed after a production shakeup.
Hollyoaks star Rita Simons has revealed she was originally meant to play a very different character on the soap. But after storylines were reworked, her role was changed.
The soap star, known for playing Roxy Mitchell on EastEnders, joined Hollyoaks in 2024 as Marie Fielding.
However, she was originally supposed to play a character with a closer connection to Warren Fox and his mum, Norma Crow, before Hollyoaks had a production shakeup.
“There was a big change in the upstairs section of Hollyoaks, so producers were moving around, so things got put on hold,” Simons said (via Parade), hinting at the transition from former executive producer Lucy Allan to Hannah Cheers.
Simons explained she was cast as Norma’s daughter, meaning she would have been Warren’s biological half-sister.
“I was originally coming in as Glynis Barber’s daughter,” Simons said. “She played my mum in EastEnders, and on Hollyoaks she was Norma Crow.”
When producers changed, some storylines were reworked, leading to Barber’s exit in July 2024. Simons was then cast to take over the role of Marie, previously played by Emma Campbell Jones.
“They decided to change it to have me as the boys’ mum,” Simons said.
The shift kept her character connected to Warren as the two were former lovers – with Joel Dexter being their son.
Elsewhere, Hollyoaks revealed what happened with Amy Barnes’ unaired death scene.
Speaking on the Hollyoaks Unwrapped podcast, Amy star Ashley Slanina-Davies explained she filmed scenes where her character died of smoke inhalation in the 2012 explosion at Il Gnosh.
However, producers called her at the last minute to ask her back to “reshoot” some scenes, with Amy ending up staying in Chester until 2017, when she was strangled by Ryan Knight.
