Ex EastEnders star Nina Wadia joins the cast of Holby City

Ex EastEnders star Nina Wadia is the latest signing to Holby City.

The 45-year-old actress, best known as Zainab Masood in BBC soap EastEnders, revealed on ITV's This Morning that she will play a neurosurgeon called Annabelle Cooper on the BBC medical drama.

Nina, who said she has just started filming on the show, admitted she finds the medical jargon challenging.

"It's like another language. It literally is like learning Japanese," she said. "I had to do this take, walking down the corridor with Corrie legend John Michie - who by the way is the naughtiest guy, as is Camilla who plays his daughter!"

Nina continued: "We had to do this long, trekking walk and I had to say this stuff about astrocytomas and monoclonal antibodies. I got all the way to the end and just missed the last phrase of the sentence and said, 'No, I have to do it again!'

"It's hugely difficult. I keep saying, 'Why did they cast me for a neurosurgeon?'."

A Holby City spokesman said Nina's first scenes will screen in April and she will appear in five episodes.

Nina, who left EastEnders in early 2013, now stars in Still Open All Hours. She will also start shooting new movie Strangeways, Here We Come, which is being produced by her own film company.

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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.