Jennifer Metcalfe says her 'Hollyoaks' cancer storyline helped her grieve for her late father.
Jennifer Metcalfe has opened up on feeling 'so vulnerable' filming Mercedes McQueen's cancer journey
The 41-year-old actress was only a teenager when she lost her dad to bowel cancer and in upcoming episodes of the E4 soap, her character Mercedes McQueen is battling the deadly disease.
Jennifer says that despite the scenes being extremely emotional to film, it was like "pure therapy" for her after going through the loss of her parent.
She told The Sun: “My dad died of bowel cancer when I was 15 so I lived through it with him, which is why I wanted to do this storyline as well.
“You can get some people that go, ‘I can't do that because I went through that and I don't want to tap into that’. I've never grieved for my dad. That's like pure grief what we watched there. Pure therapy and the rest of it.”
The soap has teamed up with the charity Bowel Cancer UK to make it as realistic as possible and they highlighted the pressure the NHS is under as Mercedes has her treatment delayed due to a shortage in a chemotherapy drug.
One part of filming that left Jennifer distraught and feeling "vulnerable" was when she wore a bald cap.
She recalled: “I spent four hours in prosthetics for the bald cap and really invested serious time. Them guys are so incredibly talented. As they were doing it at the end I was like, I can't even look at myself in the mirror because I feel like I'm a woman sat here with cancer.
“I felt so sad for how I looked, for how women must feel in her position and the look at myself with no hair like that. It felt really vulnerable. The minute that bald cap arrived and the scripts came, so amazing. There was very little work for me to do.”
Jennifer struggled to hold back her tears filming the heartbreaking scenes.
She said: “There was barely a scene I could do, even if I wasn't talking about the cancer, without just standing there and welling up for myself because I just felt so vulnerable.”
Jennifer insists she is unsure what the future holds for Mercedes on the show, but her main aim is to raise awareness and the ways to check for signs of bowel cancer.
She said: "I just trust whatever tale Hannah [Cheers, Producer] and the show want to tell for that character will be the right decision.
“If they want to choose that Mercedes doesn't survive this, I know that will be the right decision for the show.”
Tagged in Jennifer Metcalfe