A Casualty star has revealed that a heartbreaking storyline left them struggling. Kellie Shirley first appeared on the BBC medical drama last year, playing psychiatric liaison nurse, Sophia Peters, and she made quite the impact.
Despite only appearing on the show for several months, Sophia became a firm fan favourite after making Dr Dylan Keogh open up like never before, finding love. In a twist that fans hadn’t seen coming, Sophia told Dylan she was pregnant with their child, leaving the doctor completely stunned, with him being vocal about his fears of becoming a dad.
Due to his fears, he suggested that Sophia have a termination, something she was initially hesitant about, having felt as though she was alone. But while Dylan was being held in police custody, having been arrested for manslaughter by gross negligence after he treated Thea, who died after a car smashed into a restaurant, Sophia made the decision to terminate their child, having spent hours trying to call him, unaware he was locked up.
Kellie Shirley has opened up about her time on Casualty and one storyline she found challenging(Image: BBC STUDIOS)
Things, however, changed rapidly. Dylan soon realised that he wanted to have the child, and even gifted Sophia a bib, unaware that she had taken the first abortion pill. When she informed him of the news, she also revealed she was leaving Holby and had taken a job elsewhere, leaving him utterly devastated.
“I struggled with that storyline,” Kellie told the Mirror. She went on to add: “I mean, I’d only recently had my baby, and my hormones were all over the place. Yeah, I found it difficult.” But looking back, she admits Sophia should have realised something was amiss when Dylan didn’t pick up the call.
“She knew that he was a doctor and of course, he’d have been in surgery or all sorts of things. But it’s a drama, it’s a continuing drama, and it’s not real life.” Before Kellie joined the programme, it had briefly touched on the topic of mental health.
“Mental health is so spoken about now, isn’t it? And it’s so important,” she explained. The former EastEnders star continued: “Everybody, since COVID, since the pandemic, has experienced mental health issues. How could you not? Being in lockdown, being shut away, not knowing about your family members. I mean, everybody experienced it.”
Dylan was left heartbroken when Sophia terminated their child(Image: BBC STUDIOS)
She added that despite the heartache some faced during the pandemic and various lockdowns, it enabled people to break the taboo and speak openly about mental health. Kellie said: “One of the good things about that experience was that people were talking about mental health more, won’t they? I suppose that’s the silver lining from something so awful. And so for the BBC to bring this psychiatric liaison nurse, bossing it, was really exciting for me.”
The role, however, also had a different meaning for Kellie, who in previous roles has not had a full-time profession. “And I very rarely get cast as somebody who’s got a job, somebody who is a professional,” she commented, before continuing: “And that was something that was really exciting for me and fair play to Kohn Cannon, he’s the casting guy at the BBC, who got me in the room for it, because I was doing a chat on this thing called BAFTA Elevate that I was part of, and it was about working class actors who hit his glass ceiling, or always up for the same, playing the same parts.
“I love playing those parts, of course, I do, but I wanted to be challenged a bit more, and he saw me do this. Talk, and then he got me in the room for this part. So thank you, John Cannon.”
