EastEnders spoilers follow.
EastEnders legend Patsy Palmer has explained why her character Bianca Jackson is returning to Walford.
It was announced last month that Palmer would be reprising her iconic role this autumn, after wrapping up a previous short stint earlier in the year.
Bianca was last seen fleeing Walford following a huge row with half-sister Sonia, where she shared her suspicions that Reiss Colwell was untrustworthy.
Since Bianca fled the Square, Reiss has murdered his comatose wife Debbie before allowing his unsuspecting partner Sonia to face a murder charge for the crime he’d committed.
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Ahead of her return scenes next week, Patsy Palmer confirmed that Bianca is back in Albert Square to prove Sonia is innocent.
“Before she left the Square, Bianca felt that something wasn’t right with Reiss, and he was up to something,” she recalled. “She was putting two-and-two together after getting little clues about him here and there, and she was right! Now she’s found out that her sister is in jail for the murder of Reiss’ wife, and she’s on a mission to prove Sonia is innocent.”
The actor went on: “I think Bianca is a pretty good judge of character. Even though she can be quite chaotic, but she’s got a high level of intuition about things.
“Bianca is the only person who has been paying attention to all the red flags about Reiss.”
While Bianca may have her own doubts about the murder case, she steadfastly supports Sonia.
“She believes Sonia is innocent, but she does have a millisecond of doubt here and there and wonders if she’s wrong about all of this,” she teased. “But not more than a millisecond. Bianca is totally convinced that Reiss killed Debbie.”
Viewers can expect to see Bianca initially hit some dead-ends in trying to convince Walford’s residents of Reiss’s true nature.
“Bianca is frustrated by everyone,” Palmer joked. “She’s screaming it from the rooftops and telling everybody she needs help with this, but no one is listening to her. Everybody seems to really like Reiss, and that’s understandable because he seems like a really nice guy.
“Reiss seems like a gentle character, and it’s hard to believe that anybody would do the things he’s done. But Bianca feels as though the whole world is against her, and nobody is even trying to help her. Bianca is a bit much with how she goes about trying to prove it, but in the end, she’s right, so I’m sure she’ll eventually be glad that she’s pushed it as much as she has.”
Bianca’s crusade to free her half-sister faces a stumbling block when even Sonia is not convinced that Reiss could have killed Debbie.
“Sonia would be heartbroken, very sad and totally broken. Reiss is the love of her life and they are having a baby together, so this would destroy her,” Palmer said.
“I think Sonia is quite strong, but she’s pregnant and in jail, so it’s hard to imagine how awful that would be. I think Bianca is conscious of that and would be worried about the impact on Sonia, just as she worried about how Whitney would react when she was pregnant and Zack cheated on her. Bianca could lose her sister because of this.”
The soap is set to revisit another story strand from earlier in the year. Bianca previously confided in Kat Slater that she’d stopped taking her depression medication.
Palmer hinted that there may be something beyond depression going on when Bianca skips a GP appointment that Kat set up.
“I think Bianca is nervous that there’s something wrong,” she said. “She has been told before that she’s suffering from depression, but she knows that this isn’t depression, even though you could get diverted into thinking it was. It’s very difficult when your behaviour is a bit off to figure out what it is.”
If there wasn’t enough excitement and intrigue over Bianca’s return, the BBC has previously confirmed that Michael French will be back for a short stint soon as her father David Wicks.
EastEnders airs on Mondays-Thursdays at 7.30pm on BBC One. The show also streams on BBC iPlayer, where most episodes drop early at 6am ahead of their TV broadcast.
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