EastEnders' Lindsey Coulson says Carol's cancer has made her reassess her own life

EastEnders star Lindsey Coulson has said she feels more grateful for her own life since playing out Carol Jackson's cancer storyline.

The actress has been working on Carol's breast cancer diagnosis and treatment in the BBC One soap and said having to live through her character's illness had changed the way she thought about things.

She told TV Times: "It's certainly made me reassess things. I feel very grateful that it's not real and it's not my life, and I wasn't having to make those decisions that Carol was having to make.

"I'm not having to deal with that and, hopefully, I won't have to. But if I do, maybe I'm now armed with some information that I never would have had before."

Lindsey added that she had been keen to do justice to the storyline when she first found out about it from EastEnders' executive producer Dominic Treadwell-Collins.

She explained: "I said that if I was going to play a breast cancer story, I wanted it to be positive. I'm hoping that will be honoured."

 

 

Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 

An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.