She enjoyed 18 months playing a serial killer which led to a string of nominations and TV gongs. But former Emmerdale star Paige Sandhu has plans for more wacky screen parts and hopes to follow in the footsteps of Helena Bonham Carter.
Paige played Meena Jutla who is serving life in jail after murdering Leanna Cavanagh, Andrea Tate and Ben Tucker in the Yorkshire Dales. Oscar-nominated Helena, 56, played a murderer who made pies out of corpses in creepy 2007 flick Sweeney Todd, directed by her ex Tim Burton.
Paige, 25, said: “I loved playing a serial killer. Meena is funny and she can be childlike. She is unpredictable and that can make people go, ‘I know she is bad but I’m kind of rooting for her to get away with it so I can watch her more’.
“There are characters on TV that I watch and love. The series You on Netflix – I hate the main character but then at the same time I love him and I want to carry on watching him do terrible things.
“I would play baddies for the rest of my life, I find them so fun. Mainly I want to play characters that are really interesting, that I find challenging and fulfilling.
“I really like odd characters so Helena Bonham Carter’s career is really inspiring to me because she chooses characters that are so interesting and very different from each other.
“There is something odd about them which I love. She is one of my heroes. I would love to be in a Tim Burton film.”
Since leaving Emmerdale in April, Paige has been inundated with reality TV offers.
She said: “It is nerve racking leaving the show, security is such a valuable thing but to fulfil myself I want to continue to play different characters, to be more and more challenged.
“If I’d played Meena for the rest of my life it would have been comfortable but I would yearn to do other things as well. I have been offered reality shows but I can’t say which – and I’m not doing it.”
She wouldn’t turn down an offer from Hollywood but added: “I’m such a home girl, I don’t know if I could go over and do a pilot season.”
Paige began her acting career with appearances in Doctors and Endeavour before being cast in Emmerdale as villainous nurse Meena in 2020.
She says she stopped looking at comments on her acting on social media in order to protect her mental health.
Paige said: “I checked Twitter after the first episode on Emmerdale and the comments weren’t very nice so I made a decision from then on to never do that again.
“I was like, this is not good for my mental health and it’s also not good for my confidence going into my job. I have benefitted from that massively and I have the feeling that other people’s opinions about me are none of my business, that’s to do with them and I don’t need to know everyone in the world’s opinion.”
Now Paige says she is determined to land a part “where the quality of writing is brilliant”, adding: “I’ve got something lined up so watch this space.”
