HOLLYOAKS’ RORY DOUGLAS-SPEED REVEALS THE TRAGEDY IN STORE FOR THE NEWLY-WEDS…
HOLLYOAKS | E4 MONDAY
Prepare for heartbreaking scenes in Hollyoaks this week, as pregnant Leela discovers her unborn baby boy has died, and must be delivered stillborn.
The traumatic storyline has an extra layer of poignancy as actress Kirsty-Leigh Porter, who plays Leela, experienced this for real in 2018 when she lost her baby daughter, Penny-Leigh, at just 29 weeks.
Kirsty-Leigh’s co-star Rory Douglas-Speed, who plays Leela’s new husband Joel, joins us to discuss the devastating time ahead for the pair…
Hi, Rory. Are Joel and Leela in a good place after the wedding?
There was a bit of ‘Will they? Won’t they?’ in the build-up, but yes, they’re very happy. Everyone was laughing and joking at the wedding, and – dare I say it – there were no real dramas for a change! But it’s all too good to be true. It was important to show the highs before the lows that are about to come.
When does Leela realise that she hasn’t felt the baby kick for a quite a while?
They get home that evening and it’s been such a crazy day she can’t actually remember the last kick she felt, but she works out it was a few hours ago. It’s one of those things me and Nadine [Mulkerrin, aka Cleo, Rory’s real-life partner and mother to their two sons] have been through in her pregnancies – something irks you a little bit, but initially you think nothing of it. It’s important to get checked out, so Leela calls her midwife, who tells her to wait to see if anything changes.
Why does she go to the hospital without Joel?
He falls asleep on the couch, and because Leela thinks it’s nothing to worry about she doesn’t want to wake him. She still hasn’t felt the baby so goes to the hospital and has a scan – and eventually sees a consultant who tells her the news…
How does Joel find out?
Leela can’t get hold of Joel at first, so Abe and Cleo get the phone call to say she’s in hospital. They run through the village and knock on the door to tell Joel, who’s a frantic mess and just wants to know what’s going on. He gets to the hospital to find Leela, which is when he discovers their son has died. It’s pretty awful, to be honest – you see it all unfold, and the way the episode is structured means you live through every beat with Joel and Leela.
Does Joel feel guilty he didn’t go to the hospital?
Nothing that happened in the past, or is about to happen in the future, matters, it’s literally just
