Casualty stars Elinor Lawless (Stevie Nash) and Neet Mohan (Rash Masum), and producer Jon Sen have described the “surreal” feeling of winning their BAFTA TV Award.
Casualty beat EastEnders and Emmerdale in the Best Soap category, after Coronation Street was snubbed for a second year at the awards show.
Speaking to Digital Spy and other press tonight (May 12), the stars shared the pressures of keeping Casualty going for such a long time.
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“I think constantly reinventing it but also keeping its essential core values is absolutely the biggest challenge… because you have to satisfy that core audience but you’ll also want to lure in a new audience and a new generation who you want to watch the show,” said Sen.
Casualty has seen many actors grace its busy ED, with the likes of Jodie Comer, Tom Hiddleston, Kate Winslet and Daisy Ridley all appearing on the show.
“I think what’s often overlooked is that the brilliant high-end drama of tomorrow rests and relies on a vibrant continuing drama of today. We need to give it the attention and the credit and the funding that it needs in order to provide the drama industry with the stars of tomorrow,” revealed Sen.
Referring to the show as her first “proper experience of what it was to be on a TV set,” Lawless highlighted the “theatre experience” that continuous dramas provide.
“You have that cohesion between a core cast and that real family feel within that. That’s something we try to emulate within the show and I think that’s something audiences identify with as well.
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“It’s stories about people like them. And that’s really important,” she added.
Mohan echoed this sentiment when discussing his most rewarding moment on the show, the 75th anniversary episode.
He revealed it was “a semi-improvised episode and that was a real show of all different sides of the NHS coming together to try and treat a patient and to tell that story in the way that we did it.
“I was really proud to be a part of that,” he shared, adding: “That felt like a real achievement.”
Despite their celebratory mood, the cast refused to give any hints about who the ‘Whistleblower’ of the series is. “Absolutely not. It’s a nice try and you got me in a good mood,” said Sen, laughing. “It’s not Charlie,” joked Lawless.
