Hollyoaks' Jessica Fox: 'I don't know if I could be friends with Nancy – she's too uptight!' (VIDEO)

(Image credit: Empics Entertainment)

Jessica Fox is ambivalent about her Hollyoaks character Nancy Osbourne after 10 years of playing her – she loves her, but she doesn't think she'd be friends with her!

Jessica told What's on TV: "I love Nancy – as a character. She's so... she's like Marmite, people either love her or hate her. She's so forthright, she's so passionate, but sometimes really about the wrong things. I wish sometimes I could just sit her down and go 'Shut up!' And if she was in my actual world I don't know if I could be friends with her, if I'm honest – she's a bit too uptight for me."

As part of Hollyoaks' 20th anniversary, Jessica's been reminiscing about her part in Channel 4's enduring drama and her many man (and three marriages!)

"I'm a big fan of Nancy and Darren together," she said. "I think they just spark in a way that is quite rare in soapland. They just have a great chemistry and though they're so different.. For some reason they just get on so well, so I do miss them together."

Jessica's still not used to the recognition that goes with being on the TV most weeknights. "It's funny when you're out and about I tend to find if I'm dressed down (like I am today) with my hat on and my scarf, no one really notices me, I think it helps because I'm very little and I'm not on most people's eyelines. But if I'm dressed up people tend to go "Is that... HOLLYOAKS!' And even after 10 years I don't know how to react because I'm not sure if I'm meant to go 'YEAH!' or what so I tend to just carry on walking really quickly."

Watch Jessica talk about her 10 years on Hollyoaks, plus the new 'very glamorous and sexy and all-round gorgeous' village family, the Nightingales, who are about to elbow the Osbornes out of The Dog, above."]

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.