Actress Amanda Henderson has spoken of her sadness at leaving BBC medical drama Casualty - but she's decided she won't be leaving Cardiff, the city where the series is filmed. The 36-year-old, who is originally from Manchester, was talking to WalesOnline about the end of her character - Robyn Miller - who died after being involved in a car accident last month.
After finding out that her character would be getting killed off, Amanda recalled how she “cried a lot”. She added: “I think it’s good that I was so upset because it’s a testament to the job itself and how much I love being there. It’s okay to be gotten rid of but to be killed off, that means I can never come back.”
Of the response to her final episode, Amanda said: “The reaction has been incredible. I’ve been inundated with messages and everyone has just been so lovely and so wonderful. The negativity of everything that you can see on social media, I didn’t get any of that. I got such nice feedback from everyone.” For the latest TV and showbiz news sign up to our newsletter here.
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Amanda started playing Robyn in 2012 and since then has slowly but surely become a fan favourite with viewers. She detailed how leaving the programme after such a long time has been a “strange” experience.
“It has been strange leaving a job that I was working on every day and I still live round the corner from the studios so it's all a bit weird. It was the right time, though, because I’d done such a long time on the show and Robyn is the right character to facilitate the rest of the storylines that are about to unfold.”
Amanda recalled how Robyn’s exit was shot in October last year. She described how it was difficult to keep details of her departure under wraps. “I knew I was leaving about a year ago. I filmed my last episodes in October and that came round so quickly.
“Between now and then, I feel like I’ve still had that connection with Casualty because I’ve still been on-screen. Now it has gone, I feel like I’ve lost a huge part of my life. The character I’ve played for so long, I feel attached to her so it has been really strange.”
Despite leaving Casualty, Amanda has made a rather big life choice - she's now going to make the city where it's filmed her permanent home. “It was such a family place to be," she said of filming in Cardiff. "Because we’re in Cardiff and because most people don’t come from Cardiff and people have either relocated or go home at weekends, I think that makes us more of a family than any other show.
“I’ve moved my entire life to Cardiff because of this show and now I don’t want to leave it. I love being in a city that’s not huge. Coming here from London, everyone is so much nicer and everyone talks to each other. In 20 minutes I can be going up Pen y Fan and then in another 20 I can be going in the sea in Penarth. I’ve got everything that I need here!”
Amanda admitted that she has now been called an ‘honorary Welsh person’. “I’ve been learning Welsh. I did the programme on S4C, Iaith ar Daith, and I loved doing that. I got busy again but now I’m not working, I’ve really focused on learning my Welsh again. I love Welsh people and I don’t think there’s a greater country.”
Discussing her beginnings on Casualty, Amanda was with her friend when she found out she’d been cast as Robyn. “I used to work at the London Dungeons and when you were in there, you got no signal. I was going outside on my break, dressed as a plague victim, and my friend Becky had come out with me and we were both stood there and I had a voicemail from my agent.
“Becky said, ‘Do you want me to stay with you?’ and I said, ‘Yes please’. My agent didn’t tell me on the voicemail, he told me when I phoned him back and I just stood there and cried. Originally, the contract was only for three months but to know that you’re going on such a flagship show was unreal.”
Amanda said that, upon joining Casualty, former executive producer Oliver Kent had envisioned her character becoming ‘the new Tess’. Between 2003-2021, Welsh actress Suzanne Packer played ward sister Tess Bateman and was a hugely popular character on the show.
“When Suzanne left, Oliver said to me, ‘You’ll be the next Tess’. She’d been there 10 to 12 years and I thought that I’d never do that. I always thought they’d get rid of me at some point. It turns out that he was right because I was there for such a long time.
“Your contract is short every single time so every time your contract renewal comes up, you question whether you’ll get kept on. I had a few years where I questioned whether I wanted to stay but I loved it so much that I was happy to.”
During her time on the show, Robyn was involved in several major storylines which Amanda said was “rewarding”. She explained: “That’s one of the greatest things about doing anything long-running like that. You get pushed to your limit and there were certain things that I did that I thought I’d never do. There’s not very many jobs where you can say that you’ve given birth on a gravestone in November!
“The storylines always tested me and always pushed me. I appreciate every single one of them because if you look at how I was when I started compared to how I was when I finished, I learnt so much on that job.”
Despite saying that she’d learned a lot on Casualty, Amanda stressed that there was also a sense of pressure to do the storylines justice. “I found out that there are people that write in with their stories and sometimes those stories are used. We talk to those people and find out what happened.
“Some of the stories that we’ve had have actually been real-life so you do feel the pressure to do it justice. For me, as Robyn was a single mum and nurse, the pressure in trying to play that right was tough.”
Discussing what Casualty has taught her about herself, Amanda said: “I learnt that I can do a lot more than I think I can. There were some storylines that I thought I’d never be able to do and in the end I thought, even if I try and fail then at least I tried. I learnt all that from Robyn.”
In 2020, Casualty was praised for its handling of an episode that focused on coronavirus. Speaking of this, Amanda said: “That episode in general was the most pressure that we’ve all felt. Steve Hughes, the director said, ‘I want to make this as real and as gritty and truthful as we possibly can.’
“We weren’t wearing the masks and all the PPE and everything for as long as some of the nurses and doctors did but even we were coming out with some bruises around our faces where we’d had them on. I can’t imagine having to be in that all the time. What we realised more than anything else was the pain that the PPE puts you through.”
She added that following the pandemic, she gained a new appreciation for the NHS. “I have multiple friends who work for the NHS and my sister’s a nurse. I’ve always had that appreciation because I see how hard they all work anyway. I think through Covid, it lifted everyone’s appreciation even more.
“Working for Casualty, we’re trying to represent as much as we can. There is some artistic licence because there has to be but we want to really show what the NHS is like. With that episode, I think we did.”
After finishing work on Casualty, Amanda went straight into panto and starred as Pat the Cow in Jack and the Beanstalk at Norwich Theatre. “I love doing panto and it’s one of my favourite forms of theatre because it’s something that all ages can enjoy no matter what. I’d love to get back into theatre and hopefully I’ll do panto again this year.”
As to what she is currently working on, Amanda said: “There’s a few projects in the pipeline that I annoyingly can’t talk about. I’d still love to do some kind of tour because there’s so many theatres in the UK that I would like to see and I have a campervan now so I can go anywhere I like.”
Casualty continues this Saturday, April 8 at 8.35pm on BBC One
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