ITV Unforgotten star opens up on surprising real life family connection following affair storyline
As it returns for a new series, the stars of Unforgotten appeared on The One Show on Friday and spilled some secrets of the hit ITV crime drama. And Sinead Keenan shared with viewers a rather surprising family connection in the show.
Sinead made her debut during the last series as DCI Jessica James, replacing Nicola Walker whose popular character DCI Cassie Stuart was killed off in series four.
Jessica and Cassie's sidekick DI Sunny Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar) didn't see eye to eye at first and as the series continued viewers discovered there were tensions in Jessie's homelife as it was revealed that her husband Steve James (Andrew Lancel) had had an affair that was a little too close to home.
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During her appearance on The One Show, Sinead revealed that the actress playing the other woman, Jessie's sister Debbie, was in fact her real-life sister, Grianne Keenan.
Host Roman Kemp, who was presenting alongside Clara Amfo, said to Sinead: "This is such a mind boggle moment but in the last series your character Jess finds out that her husband is having an affair with her sister but your sister in the show is played by your actual sister in real life. Safe to say, not real-life husband? That would be horrendous! But how fun is it to play this out with her?"
Sinead replied: "Oh it's great, it's great - thankfully that has never happened in real life so it was lovely. We've been in the same shows through our careers but our characters never met, crossed paths, so yeah that was real good fun."
Meanwhile, Sanjeev opened up to The One Show viewers about Sunny's famous backpack. The 61-year-old has become a favourite amongst viewers playing the role since the cold case investigative drama first launched in 2015 and returns to ITV1 for series 6 on February 9.
But fans have been left intrigued by the character's props used on set and what Sunny often carries in his black bag.
He said: "From the second series onwards, I asked the costume department to fill it with stuff, but don't tell me what's in it."
The One Show is on BBC One weeknights at 7pm and on BBC iPlayer
