Home and Away's Emily: 'I had to go home'
Home and Away star Emily Symons said she would never have forgiven herself if she hadn't left the UK to care for her ill mother. The actress left her role as Louise Appleton in Emmerdale in 2008, and returns to screens as Summer Bay's dizzy Marilyn Fisher next Friday. Emily, who spent 10 months caring full-time for her cancer-hit mum Glenn, told Australia's The Daily Telegraph: "Mothers and daughters have a very special bond - and it was easy for me to say, 'This is the time to be with her'." She went on: "I would never have forgiven myself if I wasn't there when she needed me." As the oldest of three children, Emily said she felt a "responsibility" to be back home with her mum. She added that her time in the UK was "an amazing experience." "In so many ways it was terrific - but then my marriage ran into problems and my mother became sick with cancer," she said. "I was travelling back and forth between the UK and Australia when mum first got sick, but in the end it was unfair on the script writers and producers of Emmerdale and unfair for Mum." Click here to watch whatsontv.co.uk’s weekly soaps video preview, the Soap Scoop
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Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix.
An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.