Jo Joyner has admitted she had a ‘full-blown panic attack’ after her ‘How’s Adam?’ gaffe during EastEnders’ live week.
Fans were left confused when, in one of the live scenes to mark the soap’s 30th anniversary, Jo mistakenly referred to Ian Beale by the actor’s real name, Adam Woodyatt, as her character Tanya Branning asked best friend Jane Beale: ‘How’s Adam?’
“It was like an out of body experience,” said Jo. “I literally went: ‘How’s Adam?’, then came out of my own head and thought: ‘Well, there’s no getting out of that, you’ve just said Adam!’ Then, I came back into my head and thought: ‘Let’s get to the next scene’. Then I came off and had a full-blown panic attack!”
In fact, Jo’s confidence had taken such a knock that she feared she wouldn’t be able to appear in further live scenes the following night. Luckily, her husband was on hand for support.
“The next day when I thought there’s no way I can go back out there and do those next four scenes in front of people, my husband drove 180 miles to tell me that I could. He said: ‘You are going in, you will do this and you can do it.’”
She revealed: “So I had a lot of breathing exercises to do before the next night but I thought I’ve got to bury that ghost. If I hadn’t gone back out I’d probably still be sitting here now still distraught!”
Jo will next be on our screens in new six-part drama Ordinary Lies, which starts on BBC1 next month.
Watch Jo Joyner talk about 'How's Adam?' and the love she felt on Twitter after her mistake, above.
