After nursing her husband through his final months, Susan Cookson was ready to give up on acting altogether.
In fact, the tragedy had inspired her to retrain as a nurse to help others like her beloved husband, The Inbetweeners actor Malcolm Scates.
But just as she was driving to meet a nursing manager for advice on how to retrain, she received a phone call out of the blue offering her a role in Emmerdale… to play nurse Wendy Posner.
Susan, 58, says: “I was at a bit of a crossroads in my life through one thing and another and I decided that I wanted a more regular job.
“I started to think about changing careers and going into nursing. My husband, who is sadly no longer with us, had been very poorly and I’d nursed him. And I’d played a lot of doctors and nurses over the years, so it was a career I knew a bit about.
“I was in my car, about 10 minutes away from this meeting, when my phone went. It was Emmerdale producer Jane Hudson. I worked with her many moons ago on Casualty, but I’d not spoken to her for years.
“She said to me: ‘Look, I’m going to cut to the chase, we’ve got a new character and there’s nobody I’d rather play it than you. I know you’d be perfect for it. Do you want to come and live in the village with us? Do you want to have a think about it?’
“And I said: ‘No, I don’t need to, the answer is yes!’ And then she added: ‘Oh, and by the way, she’s a nurse…’”
Just a few weeks before, Susan had been reciting positive affirmations to herself about getting a job on the ITV soap.
The star repeated ‘I want more confidence and I want a long-term job on Emmerdale, I want it, I need it and I know I’d be happy there’ out loud every morning and night in her bedroom for two weeks.
“I didn’t discuss it with anybody, not even my sisters or my sons or my agent, so it was incredibly weird when Emmerdale called me out of the blue,” she says.
“Maybe it was just a coincidence, but I think there is more to life than we know and that things aren’t necessarily black and white, so maybe it did work.
“I also like to think that my husband is watching over me and taking care of me and the boys and that he had a hand in it.”
The actress, who lives in Sheffield with her sons Ruari, 27, and Dan, 21, started doing positive affirmations as part of a type of therapy known as The Tapping Solution, three years after Malcolm’s death from a brain tumour at the age of 58.
Based on the principles of ancient Chinese acupressure and modern psychology, tapping is said to reduce anxiety and increase productivity, by rewiring the brain to respond in healthy ways. Users tap various meridian points on their body to reinforce positivity.
Susan says: “I was trying to come to terms with my loss and I had all these questions that people dealing with grief go through.
“I’d started looking online for something to help boost my confidence, because that had really taken a hit – I was always so used to having Malc at my side and if I doubted anything, he was always great at bigging me up.
“I’d done some theatre jobs following Malcolm’s death and that was all ok, but my life felt really different without him.
“I really needed a focus and to be part of something. I needed something to get up for every morning.”
Susan decided that before she took the plunge to retrain as a nurse, she would have “one last hoorah to see if there was an acting job out there”, so started doing her Emmerdale affirmations.
Best known for playing Maggie Coldwell in Casualty from 2005-2009, Susan has now been playing devoted mum Wendy in Emmerdale for four years.
Recently her character has found love with Bob Hope, but regular viewers will know that Wendy is playing with fire having recently begun a torrid affair with Dr Liam Cavanagh, played by 41-year-old actor Jonny McPherson.
Susan reveals they were offered an intimacy coordinator ahead of filming, but they turned it down.
Viewers have already seen the duo give in to passion after bonding over their shared love of writing and a bottle of champagne - cut to the next morning and Wendy was seen asleep under a mac on the surgery bed.
Susan says the storyline is vital in celebrating older women’s sexuality.
She says: “I think it’s the standard now, for any kind of intimate scenes, to have an intimacy coordinator. I spoke to Jonny about it and said: ‘I don’t need one if you don’t.’
“He said: ‘No, I think it will make it more awkward. We’re professional enough to work this out for ourselves.’ And that’s what we did.”
“There have been some kissing scenes, but for the rest of it, it’s more the suggestion of what they’ve been up to.
“When they pitched this story to me, I was initially like: ‘Oh my God, really? At my age! Would Liam really go there?’ My reaction was to feel sorry for Jonny: ‘Oh God, he’s going to have kiss me, poor guy!’
"And then I thought: ‘It’s not me, it’s a character I’m playing, of course I can do that, we’re both professional actors.’ I’ve always said I’m done in terms of relationships, but this storyline has made me realise that if I did want to, I probably could and it would be ok.
“If it can make me feel like that, then hopefully it will make other women in their 50s and 60s realise that they’re not written off in their 50s and 60s.”
A soap veteran, Susan has popped up twice in Coronation Street over the years - most recently as Callum Logan’s mum Marion who went to war with the Platts after trying to take her grandson Max away with her.
And her role of Wendy is actually her fourth stint at Emmerdale. Her debut came in 1993 and since then she’s appeared as two different police officers, DC Fallon in 1997 and DI Judy Dove in 2002.
After playing Wendy for the past four years she’s now signed a contract for another 12 months. And no-one would be prouder than her late hubby.
She says: “The last few years have not been easy. The man I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with was no longer by my side. I thought we were going to get old and grey together.
“But Emmerdale has given me a new lease of life and a new energy. It came along at the right point in my life.
“Malcolm was always my biggest fan and always encouraged me and he would just be so pleased that I’ve ended up at Emmerdale.
“He worked on Emmerdale himself for just over a year playing PC Mitchum, the local bobby, and he absolutely loved it. He thought it was the most fantastic place to work.
“It’s funny the paths we end up taking in life, it’s almost like this was carved out for me.”
Emmerdale is on ITV1 weekdays at 7.30pm.
