Susan Cookson: Emmerdale helped me cope after the death of my husband

Susan Cookson considered training to be a nurse before she was cast in 'Emmerdale'.

The 58-year-old actress had been married to Malcolm for more than 20 years when he died in 2016 after being diagnosed with a brain tumour but admitted to being “at a bit of a crossroads” when he died and had considered changing careers until she was actually cast as nurse Wendy Posner on the ITV1 soap in 2019.

She told the Daily Mirror newspaper: “I was at a bit of a crossroads in my life through one thing and another and I decided that I wanted a more regular job.

“I started to think about changing careers and going into nursing. My husband, who is sadly no longer with us, had been very poorly and I’d nursed him. And I’d played a lot of doctors and nurses over the years, so it was a career I knew a bit about.

“I was in my car, about 10 minutes away from this meeting, when my phone went. It was Emmerdale producer Jane Hudson. I worked with her many moons ago on ‘Casualty’, but I’d not spoken to her for years.

“She said to me: ‘Look, I’m going to cut to the chase, we’ve got a new character and there’s nobody I’d rather play it than you. I know you’d be perfect for it. Do you want to come and live in the village with us? Do you want to have a think about it?’

“And I said: ‘No, I don’t need to, the answer is yes!’ And then she added: ‘Oh, and by the way, she’s a nurse…’”

The soap star - who has Ruairi, 27, and Dan, 21, with her husband - also confessed that she wanted “more confidence” and a “long-term job” so was pleased as punch to be involved in the long-running serial set in the fictional Yorkshire Dales village.

She said: “I want more confidence and I want a long-term job on ‘Emmerdale’, I want it, I need it and I know I’d be happy there’ out loud every morning and night in her bedroom for two weeks.

“I didn’t discuss it with anybody, not even my sisters or my sons or my agent, so it was incredibly weird when Emmerdale called me out of the blue.

“Maybe it was just a coincidence, but I think there is more to life than we know and that things aren’t necessarily black and white, so maybe it did work.”