Three years on Emmerdale and Casualty was enough – now I have my dream role, says Chelsea Halfpenny

SHE raised hell as rebellious teen Amy Wyatt in Emmerdale and moved Casualty viewers to tears with Alicia Munroe’s harrowing rape storyline.

And now talented Chelsea Halfpenny, 30, has turned her attention to the stage and her dream role of Jenna in the critically-acclaimed musical Waitress.

It’s a major departure from the doom-laden Dales and hospital halls of Holby, but it’s one Chelsea is delighted to have made.

In an exclusive interview with The Celeb Report, she said: “I feel super lucky to be back on stage with this show (Waitress) because it’s a show I’ve always wanted to be in since it started.

“I feel very much at the beginning of that journey. It’s such a brilliant show and so heartwarming and clever, and the lyrics and the songs are beautiful. I’m really excited, it’s literally my dream role.”

While some soap stars can spend a lifetime on set as the same character, Chelsea got the itch to try something new after few years on both soaps.

She relished pushing the boundaries of her characters but believed she’d taken them as far as she could go.

“I’ve never given myself a time limit,” she explained. “But it just happened naturally that all of the shows I’ve done… after three years it comes to a point I feel ready to go, where I feel I’ve explored as much of that character as can be explored at that point.

“I can totally see why people do stay in those shows because they don’t come into people’s careers very often. For me, I’ve absolutely loved them when I’ve done them and then wanted to move on and do other things.”

Chelsea was offered a return to Emmerdale as Amy before the role was eventually recast with Natalie Ann Jamieson in 2019.

Does she feel that has taken away her opportunity to return in the future, as many former soap stars are fond of doing?

She said: “When they said if I didn’t want to they’d recast, I think I had to make peace with it because I don’t know if I ever had the intention of going back anyway, so there was no need for me to cling on to a job that I might not have returned to.

“Not that I didn’t love it, I just wanted to move on. You just want to always move forward. I was just really pleased for Natalie that she gets the opportunity to play that character.

“At the time I had just left Casualty so I felt the desire to go into another long running show wasn’t there, so at the time it didn’t feel too much of an opportunity to say goodbye to.

“I do see why now maybe a year later when things had got a bit quieter I might have had a moment… ‘that would be a really nice thing to go back to’, but at the time it didn’t feel right, and I had to go with me gut really.”

Like most people in the performing arts industry, the past two years have been a period of great uncertainty for Chelsea.

The stop-start nature of the lockdowns threatened the very existence of established venues and productions, while TV shows were forced to come up with ingenious methods to keep filming.

But the pandemic also highlighted the camaraderie within the arts as well the love the nation has for them.

And now Chelsea is coming together with a whole host of stage stars for The National Lottery’s Big Night of Musicals to shine a spotlight on the world of stage.

Hosted by Jason Manford at Manchester’s AO Arena, the show will be screened on BBC One on Saturday night.

Chelsea will sing She Used To Be Mine from Waitress while other acts include the cast of Dreamgirls, Frozen and The Lion King.

Chelsea said: “I love things like this. This is definitely the kind of thing I would watch on TV so I’m really excited to be a part of it but especially representing Waitress and singing the song I’m gonna be singing. It’s pretty epic.

“I would urge anybody to support the arts where they can. For us to be able to perform to so many people all together feels really special.”

Chelsea Halfpenny from Waitress will be performing as part of The National Lottery’s Big Night of Musicals event on Saturday 29th January on BBC One at 7:00pm to thank National Lottery players for their support in helping over 2,000 theatres through the Covid crisis.