EastEnders legend Lindsey Coulson has reflected on her Carol Jackson days ahead of the BBC soap’s 40th anniversary celebrations.
Carol, who the star played intermittently between 1993 and 2015, has been notably ‘missing’ during a number of key stories for her family over the last year.
When she departed Albert Square, she had separated from partner David Wicks (Michael French), before riding into the sunset on a motorbike.
She has been referenced several times since, though Lindsey has not reprised the role.
This is despite eldest daughter Bianca (Patsy Palmer) returning to Walford and subsequently vanishing – with her relatives unaware that she’s actually being held hostage by killer Reiss Colwell (Jonny Freeman).
Reiss, who is engaged to Carol’s youngest daughter Sonia Fowler (Natalie Cassidy), allowed his fiancée to take the blame for a murder he committed.
Heavily pregnant, she faced the prospect of spending the rest of her life behind bars – until Bianca threw a lifeline and recorded a confession video from captivity.
Many viewers have questioned where Carol is, and why she hasn’t been back to save her daughters.
The answer to that question? Lindsey Coulson is starring in the latest series of Waterloo Road, which kicks off on BBC One and iPlayer next week.
Lindsey told Metro that her character Dame Stella Drake – who is the academy’s new head – is ‘pretty strict’ and ‘pretty old-school’.
‘She cares passionately about education. She’s probably not someone you could particularly offer alternative information to at the moment. I hope she softens a little through the first season’ she explained.
‘I think she’s just getting to grips with being at this school. It’s a school that’s had a bit of history in terms of murder so she’s trying to wing her way through that.
‘I think also because she’s been at Ofsted for 15 years previous to this, I don’t think she thought she was going to come back into mainstream school but because there was a problem at Ofsted she’s had to come back again.
‘So I think she’s slightly on the back foot with how schools have changed in that time. She’s not always on top of everything at the moment so I think that’s why she comes across as being a bit strict and what she says goes.’
Stella waltzes straight into Waterloo Road and ruffles feathers with both staff and pupils in the wake of former principal Steve Savage’s (Jason Manford) imprisonment.
‘I don’t think [she] suffers fools, and she thinks this is the right way to do everything. I think she learns by it and she learns a lot from [assistant head] Coral (Rachel Leskovac)’ Lindsey explained.
Despite looking ahead to the future, she also took time to pay tribute to her EastEnders days and to provide an update on where she thinks Carol is now.
‘I was given a long time with great storylines to get better and better. It’s about growing as an actor in that and I was lucky to get some great stuff. It’s brilliant it’s been going for 40 years’ she said.
‘It’s brilliant that those actors and crew members and everybody that works there have that job because without that that’s a huge amount of people that aren’t employed.
‘I’m really proud of having been a part of that.’
The new series of Waterloo Road begins next week (Picture: BBC/Wall to Wall/Warner Brothers TV Production Services Ltd/Amy Brammall)
She continued: ‘In my head, Carol Jackson is somewhere, she’s done an Open University degree, she’s reading books on a beach with a really lovely man in her life and she doesn’t really want to come back to that Square at all because she’d end up working in the caff or the pub.
‘I like that she’s gone off into the wherever and in my head she’s really grown as a person and is good.
‘I really loved Carol, because you’re also bringing your -isms, my Lindseyisms, to some of the bits that you do.
‘Obviously we’re given storylines and you have to fulfil that but you can try and bring some of your sense of self to it. I always liked her as a character.’
It’s an exciting time for the BBC dramas, with the fifteenth series of Waterloo Road beginning Tuesday, February 11th, and EastEnders marking a milestone forty years with a live episode and high-stakes drama the following week.
