Patsy Kensit has opened up about the panic attacks she experienced during the early weeks of her return to ITV‘s Emmerdale, admitting the sheer volume of lines she had to learn left her seriously rattled as she reprised the role of villainous Sadie King.
Patsy Kensit’s Panic Attacks and the Weight of Returning
‘During the first two weeks, I was having panic attacks and I was so worried about the amount of dialogue we had to learn,’ Kensit told ITV News. The anxiety, she said, eventually eased as her ‘muscle memory’ kicked in, a reminder, she noted, that she has ‘been doing this [her] whole life’.
Sadie King is not a character who deals in half-measures, and the storyline surrounding her comeback has been equally dramatic. She arrived back in the village via helicopter in the aftermath of her ex-husband Jimmy King’s tragic death, with a revelation that upended everything: she and Jimmy had, she claimed, been living together for the past three years, all while Jimmy and Nicola had been planning to renew their vows.
According to OK! Magazine, Jimmy King is set to be killed off after 22 years on the show, making Sadie’s return all the more charged. The character had already carried significant history into this storyline before a single scene was filmed.
Sadie King: From Her 2004 Debut to a Villainous Return
Sadie King first appeared on screen on 10 May 2004, introduced as the former wife of Jimmy King, according to the character’s profile on Wikipedia. Kensit played the role through to 2006 before moving on, leaving behind a character who had made a considerable impression on the village. Two decades on, that impression clearly hasn’t faded.
Kensit herself is refreshingly candid about what she enjoys most about stepping back into Sadie’s stilettos. She described herself as ‘pathologically polite’ in real life, which makes inhabiting someone as unapologetically sharp as Sadie something of a release. ‘I get to live vicariously through her,’ she said. As for whether Sadie has mellowed with age? Kensit is firm: she remains ‘a cow’ two decades later.
Part of the joy of the return has been the scenes with Emmerdale mainstay Claire King, who plays Home Farm entrepreneur Kim Tate. Kensit was not shy about what those scenes felt like. ‘I got to do some scenes with Claire King the other day and we took it old school. Old school bitches,’ she said. If the behind-the-scenes energy is anything to go by, viewers are in for some properly combustible television.
Kensit originally left Emmerdale to take on the role of Faye Morton in Holby City, a stint that ran from 2007 to 2019. Returning to a long-running soap after more than a decade away could have been daunting, but Kensit says the production itself made the transition easier than expected.
‘It’s overwhelming when you come back, because it’s such a well-oiled machine,’ she said, praising the cast, crew, hair and make-up departments, and costume teams. She described Emmerdale as ‘one of the best places I’ve ever worked’ and said she was ‘so impressed’ on returning to set. Walking around the studio, she found herself saying: ‘It’s so glamorous.’
The Patsy Kensit panic attacks story is, in its own way, a reminder of what it takes to walk back into a world that moved on without you, and then make it feel like you never left. Emmerdale airs on weeknights at 8pm on ITV1 and streams on ITVX.
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