EastEnders' Cheryl Fergison opens up on needing to use a food bank after soap stardom

Cheryl Fergison said her life paralleled her EastEnders character Heather Trott's when she was left in so much debt that she had to use a food bank.

Credit: This Morning / ITV / ITVX

Video transcript

When I was in EastEnders, you suddenly get this money and I thought, I'm gonna treat my friends and my family to holidays and things that they, we've never had.

So I would just get money and it would just go, oh, hello, let's go to these countries and let's do this and let me buy my son this and let he'd never have this.

So, uh, it was kind of like it.

Was fritter away.

I had advice from some people to say, look, you know, rein it in a little bit, but you never know, you think you're gonna be in there forever and ever, you know, you think you're gonna be the lovely Steve McFadden there forever, and you're not.

Heather was such a great character that people, Uh, she's she's not easy to forget, you know, and she was in it for 5 years and and almost my life sort of paralleled her a little bit in some things and including things like going to the food bank, that's the sort of thing that Heather would have done.