Casualty Star Breaks Down Over Emotional Child Cancer Story as Blood Shortages Add to Crisis

A BBC Casualty star “sobbed” as she read through her script for the Christmas special.

Lucy-Jo Hudson made her return to the Holby City emergency department, 14 years after she last appeared on the show. But this time, the Leeds-born actress had no idea just how much of an impact her involvement in the All I Want For Christmas episode would have. Throughout the episode, which aired on December 21, viewers at home were given an insight into the goings on of a real working hospital – dealing with low supplies of blood.

Over the years, Casualty has never shied away from giving viewers a glimpse of the chaos behind the scenes that patients often don’t see. But this time, the level of impact the show had saw a staggering rise in people signing up to give blood. Viewers heard from people who had previously relied on blood donations as people realised just how important it was to donate in order to save lives.

The show also received praised for the sensitive ways it handled the infected blood scandal which saw more than 30,000 people in the UK be given blood which had been infected with HIV and hepatitis C between the 1970s and 1980s. Speaking about her role on the show Lucy-Jo, 41, who played Adele in the special said: “It was amazing, they haven’t done a Christmas special for about seven years, when I read it and read the bits of the documentary style inserted into the drama, I thought ‘Oh my God, this is amazing,’ I was blown away by it, I thought it was very relatable.

“The fact that we brought in real life people who have gone through what we’re dramatising, I felt it was mega and something different. It set up the whole new series.” Fans saw Adele young daughter, Leah, display symptoms of meningitis, including a headache and tiredness. However, Adele had no idea what was in store for her. Leah was later diagnosed with leukemia and required an urgent blood transfusion.

“I’ve got kids myself, so you instantly resonate with the fact ‘This could be me, this is other mums out there,” Lucy-Jo said. “You’ve seen that in the special, you’ve seen that with the mother whose daughter has been diagnosed and how traumatic it is. I loved how it was written, I took my daughter in thinking ‘She’s not great, maybe its chickenpox or measles, or she’s got a viral bug. Never, ever did she expect to hear the C word – you don’t hear it or you don’t see it much, children getting diagnosed with it.

“You don’t want to hear or see that kids are going through such horrific times but it is, there’s children out there.” Lucy-Jo went on to reveal that she was aware of a young boy, known as Mighty Max who was going through something similar since a young age. “You don’t want it for the kids, you just want tot take it away from them. So to read it, I was sobbing, I resonated with my kids and thought ‘God, if this was me with mine, how do you cope?'”

But while such a devastating diagnosis is often delivered by a doctor in a quiet room, Adele was told her daughter had the awful disease in the packed emergency department by Stevie Nash, played by Elinor Lawless, who had initially hoped to delay delivering the diagnosis in a bid to not ruin Leah’s Christmas.

Reflecting on this, Lucy-Jo added: “I think the doctor, Ellie who played the doctor, she didn’t want to spoil it for Adele or the daughter, she wanted to wait til after Christmas. But it was so chaotic in the hospital with the big accident on the motorway, it was a case of ‘We need to move, this is happening’ but she understands that they’re all human beings and she’s got to take care of her emotions.

“So it was a case of how do I say it, it sort of just happened – it was a there and then, it happened in the corridor.” Lucy-Jo revealed that her direct messages had since been flooded with responses from people who explained that her reaction was extremely authentic as they had also reacted the same when being delivered the news.

“I’ve had loads of people saying they experienced this years ago when the children were younger,” she said, before adding that the children had “come through it.” Lucy-Jo went on to explain that a mother’s instinct is never wrong, but a mother never expects to hear such devastating news on Christmas Day.

“My inboxes have been inundated with people saying they’ve tried to get through to donate blood, or there’s a 45 minute wait on the phone,” she said, adding: “Which is amazing because the message got out without saying donate blood – specifically the message behind it and the education behind int made you feel like ‘I need to help, I need to do it.'”

But while Lucy-Jo resonated with the child cancer storyline, she also had her own experience with requiring a blood transfusion – unbeknownst to the producers and writers. The actress received blood transfusions last year as she battled chronic anaemia. She explained: “When I got it, I instantly thought ‘Oh my God, this is me, in need of that,’ I’ve lived for years not feeling very well for all sorts of reason, just thinking it’s life, stressed, kids and being busy – you never plan to put yourself first.

“It wasn’t until I actually did need the transfusion, I realised how poorly I was. If they hadn’t had the blood there and then, you just don’t know – you don’t realise. Especially that time of year, Christmas time when everyone’s busy, preoccupied, they’re all getting Christmas sorted, there’s more accidents because it’s darker is getting colder and there the ice and snow and people don’t have the time to give as much. Then in the New Year, resolutions, ‘Going to start giving blood again’, Christmas time is when people are so preoccupied with Christmas, that is when we really need it, around the winter time, the winter months.

“I think it was good that we put it out at Christmas time, to make people realise this is going on, there is a need, massively around Winter, obviously it’s needed all year round but I think they’re kind of low in the winter months.” Lucy-Jo admits she was “blessed” to have a part in the show which brought awareness to so many people, explaining that she wanted it to appear “real” on screens.

Although she squirms watching herself back on screens, the actress watched the show with her partner in order to see how the storyline played out across screens. She said: “It was amazing, we were all so engrossed watching it because it was such a fabulous story.” One scene in particular made her well up, when viewers saw a real-life young girl who had battled the same condition as her on-screen daughter and required blood transfusions.

“We all welled up, I was so upset watching it,” she said before continuing: “I was upset watching it thinking ‘What I’ve just done is actually, there’s someone out there living that, I don’t know how they cope with it. I thought it came across brilliant, I thought Steve Hughes who directed it, how it was shot – it was very real, they didn’t have to dramatise it. I was really proud to be a part of that.”

During our exclusive chat, Lucy-Jo discovered that over 5,000 new people had singed the blood donor register, with over 10,000 appointments made to give blood. “Wow, that is amazing, I didn’t know that figure. That is all through one episode, that is sensational, that’s going to change so many people’s lives. That’s brilliant, we’ve done a good job, the message has been put out there, which is amazing.”

She continued: “We didn’t want to say ‘Go donate blood’, but we wanted the message to be in the story, to make everybody make their own decisions.” Lucy-Jo’s own mother-in-law explained that she was struggling to get through on the phone lines as they were “absolutely mental”. The actress added: “That is the power of telly, social media, that sort of thing – to get the message out pretty quick. That was the Saturday before Christmas when everybody is so busy.”

Casualty airs tonight at 9.20pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer. You can sign up to donate blood or plasma on the Give Blood website here.

A BBC Casualty star “sobbed” as she read through her script for the Christmas special. Lucy-Jo Hudson made her return to the Holby City emergency department, 14 years after she last appeared on the show. But this time, the Leeds-born actress had no idea just how much of an impact her involvement in the All I Want For Christmas episode would…