Eastenders star set for return

EastEnders star Michelle Ryan is to return to the BBC1 soap after a four-month break from filming, it was announced today.

Scriptwriters hastily re-arranged storylines after the 18-year-old actress, who plays Zoe Slater, took “extended leave” in early June for personal reasons.

Ryan, who will begin filming in October, is understood to have been suffering from nervous exhaustion.

Today, in a statement published through the BBC, she said: “I’m looking forward to getting back to EastEnders and working with everyone who has supported me throughout my time off.”

Executive producer Louise Berridge said the cast and crew were “delighted” to be welcoming back the actress who was set to star in the soap wedding of the year when she disappeared from our screens.

In an interview last year Ryan, who still lives at home with her parents and brother in north London, admitted that she found working on the soap extremely stressful.

She was left feeling emotionally drained after filming scenes in which she discovered that Kat, played by actress Jessie Wallace, was really her mother and not her sister.

“Filming the special with Jessie was an emotional rollercoaster from start to finish,” she said.

“We had 25 incredibly emotional scenes to film, one after the other. By the end I felt drained. Between takes I just slumped in a chair and tried to gather my thoughts.”

“Some of the scenes were so physically draining and I’d put so much into them that I wasn’t fit to do anything other than sleep.”