EastEnders star admits ‘it’s been difficult’ as she addresses tough time after soap exit

Being too ill to work was ‘a really difficult time,’ Cheryl said (Image: BBC)

For five years, Cheryl Fergison was a household name as she played hapless laundrette assistant Heather Trott in EastEnders. But after her character was killed off in 2012, Cheryl went through a period of devastating health problems and a financial struggle that saw her, like so many people during the cost of living crisis, having to use food banks to feed her family.

Cheryl’s money troubles began after she was diagnosed with womb cancer in 2015, which sadly halted her acting career.

However, she says strangers now find it impossible to understand that, having once been famous, she’s not still wealthy. Cheryl explained to Kaye Adams on her How to be 60 podcast: “I still walk down the street and people expect me to be rolling in money.”

Cheryl says that people can’t understand why she now sings in her local Chinese, rather than dining out in top restaurants, but she’s adamant that she should be able to earn money wherever, and in what ever way, she can.

She told Kaye: “Who is anybody to tell me what I should do just because I’ve been in a popular programme on the television? People say to me, ‘do you still do acting?’ And I go, ‘Yeah, but do you ask a plumber if he still plumbs?'”

Cheryl added that she doesn’t feel at all ashamed about using food banks and has always been honest about her struggles: “If I go to a food bank because I need to eat food, because I need my family to eat, because I can’t afford to pay the bills, or I’ve been to the Citizens Advice Bureau to help with debt management… I’m not the only person in the world that does that.”

She added: “If there’s a celebrity or… a person in the public eye who has been there, but is embarrassed or ashamed, we’ve made those people feel like that.

“You shouldn’t feel bad about any circumstances, because you could be there, and you can be there. You’re only one step away from being a homeless person on the street. You really, really

Cheryl also suffered severe financial “strain” as a result of obtaining a visa for her Moroccan-born husband Yassine Al-Jermoni. After meeting Yassine online 14 years ago, Cheryl received a torrent of hurtful comments.

She recalled: “Obviously there’s always speculation when somebody in the public eye meets somebody else, whoever it is, but we have had things thrown at us that should never have been thrown at us; things that would have broken others.”

The star added that the 21-year age gap between them had caused a lot of unkind gossip: “People don’t bat an eyelid if an older man meets a younger woman but it’s not the same the other way round. Yassine is an intelligent man, he speaks languages, yet he was being called a ‘goat herder’; he and his family in Morocco were hounded – we endured a lot.”

Only three years after their wedding came Cheryl’s bombshell cancer diagnosis.

After doctors discovered Cheryl had stage two cancer of the womb, she said: “There were some dark moments, especially at night, when I thought, ‘Am I going to die? Am I going to leave my husband without a wife, my son without a mum?'”

Along with her health worries, Cheryl was unable to work and, by February 2024, was facing serious financial problems. “I didn’t have any money to do a weekly shop,” she told the BBC. “I was trying to pay too many debts.

“It was a really difficult time,” Cheryl added. “Lots of people can relate to it. You’re trying to find a penny. You’re literally looking down your settee to see if you can find a quid.”

Returning to work has been a struggle, Cheryl adds, because now that it’s been more than a decade since she left EastEnders, producers still find it hard to see past her portrayal of Heather Trott. The actress explained: “I think it was a blessing whilst I was in it, it’s given me a great platform, the curse is that now that I’m out of it is that I struggle to not be seen as Heather Trott.”