EastEnders spoilers: Aunt Babe to reveal Shirley's secret? Annette Badland interview
Will the Carters finally learn the truth about Mick being Shirley's son?
Aunt Babe (Annette Badland) is to show a ruthless streak to her personality next week when she threatens to blow Shirley's (Linda Henry) big secret.
Unbeknownst to Mick, Shirley is actually his mum and not his sister. And even though Babe has kept this fact under wraps for many years, it looks like those days of secrecy could be numbered.
The drama unfolds after the Carters realise that Tina (Luisa Bradshaw-White) have been working together to sell weed. Babe promises to get rid of her stash, but it isn't long before she's doing a secret deal with Dean (Matt Di Angelo) to store the drugs at Blades.
Meanwhile, Shirley’s suspicions of Dean and Aunt Babe lead her to the salon where she discovers their stash. Shirley confronts them but Dean dismisses her, telling her that he and Aunt Babe are partners. When Aunt Babe and Shirley are alone, a reminder is made that Babe knows Shirley's big secret.
And when Babe later reveals she has a big announcement to make over a Carter family meal, Shirley quickly goes into panic mode. So is the truth about to come out? Actress Annette Badland tells us more..
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So, what do the Carters make of what Aunt Babe and Tina have been doing - after all, Tina did come to them a while ago with the idea of selling weed?
Yes, she did offer it up as an idea and told them that she has dealt in weed, but they said no. She's involved Tina for good reasons - Tina wants to have a baby and it's helping her with the money for that. But, even so, she shouldn’t have involved the rest of the family and I think she probably regrets that she involved Tina.
Did Aunt Babe think the business with Tina was ever going to be a long-term thing? Or do you think she always knew it would go wrong?
She’s got a huge soft spot for Tina and will try and help her in any way she can. Tina desperately wants that baby. However, Aunt Babe isn’t sure of Tosh or their relationship. She knows about what Tosh has done to Tina. So she’s not standing for that.
When the Carters find out, Aunt Babe lies and says she's getting rid of the drugs. But she's actually done a secret deal with Dean…
Well, Babe sees it as an awful lot of money to lose! It’s her livelihood. But she will try and hold onto it because she doesn’t really trust Dean either. She sees him as a slippery fish - he’s not entirely real, he’s hot headed and young and that’s not really what she needs. But she can’t manage alone.
When Aunt Babe threatens to reveal Shirley's secret, do you think she actually has it in her to do so?
Sadly, yes. I think she is that ruthless. She loves Shirley, but she also needs to protect herself.
How does Babe feel when she realises that Shirley is involved in her stash going missing?
That’s enormous for her. She has the front of being jolly and she's all bouncy. But I tried to be very angry at that moment - just one line of real anger because she’d lost control. She can’t let that out, she has to reign that anger in and use it in some other way. She won’t expose herself by being furious, so she supresses it and torments Shirley with what she may do.
It’s terribly complex because she does, of course, love Shirley. She really does love those three children and she brought them up. But, you know, like every human-being there’s a whole complex scenario going on there.
Does she have a secret agenda?
Everyone has a dark side and there are still things that you don’t know about her. You just wait until Christmas!
