Natalie Cassidy reveals why eldest daughter is glad she is not on EastEnders anymore
Natalie Cassidy played Sonia Jackson in EastEnders on and off for 32 years until she left in April 2025.
Natalie Cassidy's eldest daughter is glad her mum's alter ego Sonia Jackson is not on EastEnders anymore.
Eliza, 15, was not a big fan of the National Health Service (NHS) nurse, who Natalie played on and off for 32 years until April 17, 2025, when Sonia left Walford for Bali with her daughters Rebecca "Bex" Fowler (Jasmine Armfield) and Julia Fowler, and her sister Bianca Jackson (Patsy Palmer).
Natalie, 42, told the new issue of Closer magazine: "Eliza watches EastEnders. She always thought Sonia was a bit boring. That was always good for the soul!
"I wasn't her favourite character. She was a bit dull, I think, for Eliza."
Natalie - who has Eliza with her 45-year-old ex-partner Adam Cottrell, and Joanie, nine, with her fiance, EastEnders cameraman Marc Humphreys - feels liberated since she left the BBC soap.
She explained: "I love being myself. I feel very comfortable being me, and I think people are enjoying getting to see me. It's hard to do when people have watched me growing up on EastEnders."
But Natalie has not ruled out reprising her alter ego Sonia in the future.
She joked: "She's living it up in Bali, I don't know what she's getting up to! It is nice to have a little rest for now. I think it's important to rest characters."
Earlier this month, Natalie said her life may have taken a darker turn if it were not for being cast on EastEnders in 1993, aged 10.
Speaking to 54-year-old journalist James O'Brien on a recent episode of LBC's Full Disclosure podcast, Natalie admitted: "It's not good. I would've been down Islington Green Canal, ending up doing God knows what.
"I think I'm a bit of a wild spirit, and I think if I hadn't have gone down the path I had, who knows what might have happened?"
The Celebrity Big Brother 2012 housemate said that she mixed in with the wrong crowd as a youngster.
She continued: "There were a lot of people around me that were a little bit stupid, would I have just followed on with them?
"I don't know what I would've ended up doing."
Natalie also admitted feeling guilty for living her life and growing up quickly before her mum Evelyn died of bowel cancer in 2002 at the age of 64, and not spending as much time with her while she could.
And the entertainer thinks her mum would have blocked her from joining EastEnders if Evelyn "would've known she was going to lose” Natalie “so young”.
The 2025 Cooking with the Stars champion said: "I struggle with guilt, and I'm getting much better at it, but the guilt I feel because I lost mum at 19.
"There's a lot of guilt around growing up a bit too quickly and wanting to be out all the time and living my life, and losing her so quick because you come back to your mum and dad.
"My brothers say it, we got the chance to come back, but it's a struggle."
