Michelle Keegan: From Corrie to the jungle
It's four years now since Michelle Keegan left her much-loved role in Coronation Street behind. But with a workload as busy as hers, the Mancunian actress, 30, has no reason to look back.
There’s a new show in the pipeline (she doesn’t give much away, but will be filming from August to Christmas), her fashion collection, and not forgetting the return of BBC One’s Our Girl.
The next instalment sees her character, Corporal Georgie Lane, head to northern Nigeria, tasked with assisting local forces after a group of schoolgirls are kidnapped.
Keegan took over as the lead of Our Girl, which follows the adventures of female medics in the British Army, from EastEnders’ Lacey Turner back in 2016 for series two.
Series three has been done a little differently — the 12 episodes have been split into three parts, with each one following Georgie and her comrades on a different tour.
The ending of part one, set in the aftermath of devastating earthquakes in Nepal, left fans shocked as Georgie’s on/off love interest Elvis Harte (Luke Pasqualino) died in her arms on the battlefield.
Now we find a heartbroken Georgie burying her head in the sand, as she returns to work after six months’ leave and is thrown right back into the action.
And Keegan is the first to admit the physical side of the show isn’t exactly something she finds easy.
“Oh, god. I hated it, I hated it,” she recalls, describing having to crawl under barbed wire. “If the boys were in here now, they’d be laughing because I was always last.”
But while she reckons she’s strong-minded like Georgie, Keegan insists there’s no way she shares her bravery.
“Even when I’m doing it [filming scenes] I’m thinking, ‘What is she doing?’. But I love playing a strong character anyway.”
As much as she’s loved the role, towards the end of three months working in “unbearable” humidity in Malaysia, Keegan was really starting to miss normality.
“I was staying in hotels, eating Malaysian food - I was sick of noodles. I just wanted to have a normal Sunday afternoon, with my family, with Mark [Wright, her husband of three years], with the dogs, and just chill.”
Since wrapping on Our Girl, she’s spent the past few months having downtime in LA, where former The Only Way Is Essex star Mark is now working as a TV presenter on US channel Extra.
However, she doesn’t reckon she could live across the pond full time - she’s too much of a “home bird”.
Her closeness to her family is one reason she took part in BBC One’s Who Do You Think You Are?
In tracing her family tree, she made huge discoveries — her great great grandmother was a suffragist, who knew Emmeline Pankhurst. (The iconic political activist even signed her great grandma’s birth certificate.)
Overall, filming the documentary series was an emotional experience at times.
“I was really, really close with my grandma and my granddad,” she reflects. “So the fact that I was doing it through them but they weren’t around for me to ask questions to...
“I found out new information about their lives that I would have loved to have spoken to them about, but I didn’t get a chance to do that.”
While Keegan knew that her grandmother was from Gibraltar, discovering she also has Italian heritage was a surprise.
She’s told her parents about it, but others in her family might only find out when the episode airs.
“We’re going to have a family night at my mum’s house,” she says. “They don’t know why but we’re going to have Italian food, and it’ll all click into place when they watch the TV.”
The experience has encouraged Mark to look at his family tree now.
“He was actually round at his grandparents yesterday, and I was there, and he was asking them about their roots!” she enthuses.
As for Keegan herself, she knows she will treasure the episode for years to come.
“I’m sure my great great great grandkids would watch the show in 100 years from now and think, ‘No way were we part of the suffragette movement!’ and, ‘No way have we got Italian roots!’”
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