EastEnders star reveals change made Lola's last scene even more heartbreaking

In Lola's penultimate episode, she shared an emotional goodbye with grandfather Billy (Fenwick) after he clashed with Nish Panesar (Navin Chowdhry) and smashed the Minute Mart window, leading to him being arrested by Jack Branning (Scott Maslen).

But when he was released from custody, Billy rushed to Lola's bedside to tell her how much he loved her. Although Lola had been in and out of consciousness all day, she recognised Billy's presence and managed to reply: "Pops - I love you too."

But Fenwick has now revealed that that line was never in the scripts, it was something that Harold had put in herself. Speaking to Digital Spy, the actor said: "Danielle put in a line that wasn't in the scripts. It was when she woke up and she said 'I love you too, Pops' and then a little tear came down. That sent me going!

"Danielle added it and it wasn't in the scripts. That did eventually become Lola's last words. We were in bits. We had to take a decent break afterwards, after doing some scenes. But Danielle has been fantastic."

He continued: "It was hard, because we've got a parallel story going on. We've got Billy, Honey and Lola – and Perry, Emma and Danielle. So a lot of the scenes are very much about her going. OK, it's not the same as the story, but it's still tears of sadness.

"It was a tough schedule, but we all committed to it. We ended up calling Danielle 'Thames Water', because she could turn on the tears like that!"

Speaking previously about Lola's final episodes, Harold has called them one of the hardest scenes she's ever filmed in her professional life.

Harold told RadioTimes.com and other outlets: "It was definitely the most difficult thing I've ever filmed in my life because, obviously, we haven't experienced it and so, just to put yourself in that mindset, it was really difficult, and slow your body down and everything. I thought that would be the easy part."

As for what's on the way in the soap now that Lola has sadly died, Jamie Borthwick, who plays Jay Brown, admits there are more emotional scenes to come.

Speaking to RadioTimes.com at the British Soap Awards, Borthwick said: "Isabella [Brown]'s great in that. More tears, sadly. But she gets the send-off she deserves."

Harold added: "I wanted to go, just to be there with my little Izzie, but I couldn't, so I can't wait to see it. I've heard they've been amazing. This one's [Borthwick] supposed to be very good..."
Harold also couldn't be more proud of her onscreen daughter Lexi (played by Isabella Brown), saying: "I can't sing her praises enough. She's been incredible and she deserves every recognition as a little actress. She's been my little rock, she's got me through everything. She knows exactly why we're doing this."

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