Gemma Merna has played Carmel McQueen for the last eight years but in tonight’s episode of Hollyoaks you will see her dramatic ending.
Speaking about her final episode, Gemma said: “My final scenes were great. The script was fantastic. It’s a lovely ending to Carmel and a great way to go out. I absolutely loved the filming. Yeah, I did get emotional when the cameras stopped rolling. We kind of worked together all day and it was very emotional from the start and was in one position with all the dying scenes and we were all together so yeah it was quite emotional but very lovely at the same time.”
She’s already had her farewell drinks with the cast, family and friends, Gemma says: “I will miss the people more than anything – it’s a great team from the crew the makeup, wardrobe, canteen so it’s a proper little family place to be so that’s probably what I’ll miss the most.”
But she says she won’t miss the cold buckets of water. She tells us: “The days where you go in and the scripts are like you get swirled in a bucket of water and it’s like nine in the morning in January so, probably that, I won’t miss getting cold.”
So, what’s next? She told us: “Spending more time with my husband [Ian Minton] is one of the things at the moment that I’m planning on doing and then moving on to new things, I’ve got a new acting agent so I’m just looking out for new scripts and auditions, it’s very exciting.”
And if you’re wondering whether Gemma will pop up in another soap, like other soap stars, or make a name for herself in the West End, she tells us: “I don’t know I think I’m just going to see what comes up and see what I want to do. I would love to start working on things where you spend a few months dissecting the script, working directly with a producer and work hard on that for three months at a time and then you’re done, because Hollyoaks is such an ongoing thing, sometimes you don’t get time to rehearse with the director beforehand, so to kind of run through it would be lovely, and to have a bit more time with my acting.”
But what character does Gemma want to play now? She tells us: “I just want to try and play a few different ones like a psychotic, a murderer or something like that, something completely different to Carmel.”
To see Gemma’s final Hollyoaks scene, tune in to Channel 4 tonight at 6.30pm.