EastEnders star Alice Haig feels 'less vain' after watching herself as Vicki Fowler
EastEnders actress Alice Haig could not watch herself as Vicki Fowler for her "first few episodes" because of how she looked, but now Alice can.
EastEnders star Alice Haig has become "less vain" after watching herself as Vicki Fowler.
The 40-year-old actress has played her alter ego since March 31, when Vicki - the daughter of Michelle Fowler (originally played by Susan Tully and later by Jenna Russell) and Den Watts (Leslie Grantham) - returned to Walford for the funeral of her Uncle Martin Fowler (James Bye), with her boyfriend Ross Marshall (Alex Walkinshaw) and his son Joel (Max Murray).
But even though Alice found it tough to watch her "first few episodes" because of how she looked on screen, the star admitted she has learnt a lot by watching her episodes back.
Asked by Matthew Rolland if she "likes" watching herself on the latest episode of his Isolation interviews YouTube series, Alice explained: "Like would be a strong word.
"I do watch myself because I really enjoy watching EastEnders, but also because it's quite good learning. You learn a lot.
"And also, it's quite good getting used to it; so, the first few episodes I found quite hard to watch, but now as it's gone on, I've been more - I've basically been less vain, I think that's what it is.
"When you first start watching [yourself], you're like, 'Oh my God, I don't look like that, I can't look like that, no, no, no!'
"And then you just get used to it, and you're like, 'OK, that is what I look like, fine.'"
Vicki - who was played by Scarlett Alice Johnson, 40, who left the BBC soap in 2004 - had an American accent because she had left Walford to live in the United States for eight years in 1995. She returned as a teenager in 2003.
Vicki left Walford again in 2004, moving to Australia with Spencer Moon (Christopher Parker) - her then-boyfriend.
And Alice initially felt "a bit alarmed" when she found out she would be playing Vicki because the star did not know if she had to do "certain things or sound like the person".
The actress explained: "I didn't know I was playing Vicki until the day before I started, so it was a bit of a bonkers moment.
"In the audition, it's all code names, you don't know who you're playing. Obviously, it's got the mood of the person, but you're not sure who you're going to be playing.
"And I found out who it was, and I think at the beginning, I was a little bit alarmed. I thought, 'Do I have to do certain things? Will I have to sound like the person?'
"And [the bosses] were like, 'Absolutely not. You do what you do, and what you did, and what you read the part as."
And Alice said it was better to make the character her own, as opposed to copying what Scarlett did.
She explained: "The more I looked into it, the more I was like, 'You can't really be somebody else's energy or have somebody else's atmosphere.'
"You are who you are when you walk on set or when you walk on stage, so you can't pretend to be somebody else.
"It's much better to just go with the information that you've got.
"So I was more interested in looking at, like, who her parents were. So, feeding in from what Michelle's energy was like, and what Den was like, and that informed much more about how I was going to play it, than really trying to copy Scarlett, who was brilliant and completely different to me, and not like me at all.
"It would've been impossible to do that, I think."
