You may have already caught this MEGA trailer for Mercedes and Riley’s upcoming ‘nuptials’ in Hollyoaks next week, but it’s so amazing, here it is for you to watch, and then watch all over again. heatworld chatted to Jennifer Metcalfe who plays Mercy, all about it…
The wedding trailer’s mega Jen, but it must have taken FOREVER to film!
To be honest it was a long day for us. I'm used to doing 12 / 13 hour days on set but this took 15 hours. It was one, big, heavy day. But we got so much out of it and it got us out of the office, so to speak - so it was all fun!
You get loads of sinister stares from other cast members in the clip – was hard to keep a straight face during filming?
No, not at all. I think everyone got in to the theme and feel of it. There weresome right funny hair dos and stuff going on too, and people behaving really out of character. Outside of acting we all had a right laugh about it all, but at the time we all managed to hold it together and be totally serious.
How hard was it to walk with the prosthetic bumps AND that MASSIVE train on your wedding dress?
[Laughs] Well, I'll let you in to a little secret - after 14 hours of shooting I had to go because for insurance purposes, so the bride walking down the aisle at the end of the trailer, isn’t actually me! When I did all my shots I had a load of girls behind me carrying the train in a bin liner! So it was actually that poor girl who took over from me who and who you only see from the back, who had the tricky part!
You cry black tears at the end of the trailer – how did they work?
They put this black tear stuff in my eye - well, they told me it was tears but Ithink it was paint it KILLED. But I dealt with it, even though I'm really crap at doing anything like that - eye drops or anything. It wasn't nice having a big black thing blobbing towards my eye! And then I had to wait for the take, put my head down and blink and it came out. But I don't know whether they actually used that or super-imposed the tear afterwards, because it looks like a very black tear in the final video. I like to think it was all my own doing. It hurt though. I have such sensitive eyes. I had my eyelashes dyed at the weekend, and even that was like the world was ending! You should have seen me. I'm just soft!
There's MAJOR drama at the wedding– why do soap weddings rarely run smoothly?
Because that's why it's a soap! Because we can! Very rarely have I ever been to a wedding and it's been like that! But I just think it's because you can. Everyone knows that if it's a wedding, a funeral or a family party - there's going to be some sort of drama about to go off!
Can you give us a teaser of what's next for Mercedes after the wedding?
Ooooh, it's a really BIG storyline, something that's never been explored before with my character. It's quite dark and it's quite deep but it's absolutely brilliant to film. And then that goes on to another big storyline, so it's one after the other for me until well into the new year! It's been intense and hard work but I've loved every minute of it – I love seeing what my character’s going to get up to.
• Hollyoaks wedding week kicks off on Monday 17 October, 6.30pm, Channel 4