The character makes a much-anticipated return tonight (Monday 6th<\/sup> September) after seven years away, and promises to rile up the Walford locals. We\u2019d expect nothing less from one of soap\u2019s most infamous villains. Reprising the role in what will be her fifth stint in the part she first played over 22 years ago is Charlie Brooks, who admits to being as shocked by her alter ego\u2019s audacity as everyone else \u2013 which is precisely what lured her back.<\/p>\n \u201cYou never know what you\u2019re going to get with Janine and you can go anywhere with her, nothing feels too much,\u201d enthuses the actress, speaking exclusively to RadioTimes.com<\/a>.<\/strong> \u201cThat\u2019s exciting to play. I enjoy her ability to charm and the fact she finds herself so amusing, I wish I was as quick or as brave as her. She does whatever she wants without thinking and can be quite awful, hopefully in a comedic way too, but is also desperately sad and very layered.\u201d<\/p>\n Soaps need their antagonists, and Brooks agrees that\u2019s the primary narrative function of black widow Ms Butcher, who\u2019s seen off three husbands and tried to poison a fourth. \u201cJanine can stir the pot and knows how to wind people up. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s much she wouldn\u2019t contemplate doing to get what she wants and ensure her survival. There\u2019s a beautiful recklessness about her, which is also not so beautiful sometimes!\u201d<\/p>\n Despite the decades of dodgy deeds, long-time fans who recall the tragic backstory that shaped the character still sympathise with her, regardless of how terribly she behaves.<\/p>\n We first met Janine in 1989 (Brooks was the third actress to play her) as a troubled six-year-old reeling from the tragic death of her mother, forced to move with her disinterested dad \u2013 the legendary Frank Butcher \u2013 and two of her three much older siblings to live with her spiky new step-mother Pat.<\/p>\n Throughout her difficult childhood she was ignored and abandoned by her feckless father, and made to feel she was always in the way. Behind that super-b***h exterior, Janine is still that vulnerable little girl who misses her mummy\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think she ever dealt with her mum dying,\u201d says Brooks. \u201cIt\u2019s deep-rooted within her soul but we\u2019ve not explored it. Her father was present occasionally but never put her first. Frank is still the most defining relationship she\u2019s had, for better or for worse. Janine is always seeking him in some way in her other relationships, she\u2019s had a lot of older men as partners and there are clearly daddy issues! She loved Frank more than anything but ultimately he was selfish, and chose her step-mum Pat over her many times.<\/p>\n \u201cI sympathise with her and she can be misunderstood. We\u2019ve seen her start to thaw sometimes in moments of reflection, only for the barriers to suddenly go up and we\u2019re back to tough-as-nails Janine.<\/p>\n \u201cTo me it\u2019s important to explore Janine\u2019s \u2018Why?\u2019 to move her forward. There are repetitive behaviour patterns from her childhood that mean she doesn\u2019t know how to love or how to be a mum herself.\u201d<\/p>\n Janine returns to fight for custody of her nine-year-old daughter, Scarlett. Unsurprisingly, considering her parental role model, the youngster has ended up in care after being abandoned, and reached out to her cousin (actually her half-brother, but that\u2019s another story) Tommy Moon, who\u2019s begged his mum Kat Slater if she can live with them. Kat is one of the numerous people Janine has crossed swords with in the past, so the scene is set for a shouty showdown between the women over Scarlett\u2019s welfare.<\/p>\n Exploring Janine as a parent was another attractive element to recreating the character for Brooks, a mother in real life to teenager daughter Kiki. \u201cFear of failure is a driver for Janine. She desperately wants to be a good mother, but deep down feels like she\u2019s failing at it \u2013 though she\u2019d never admit that!\u201d<\/p>\n In a stroke of genius, Scarlett has grown up to become a sensible goodie-goodie, pitched as the polar opposite to her mum: the exasperated Saffy to Janine\u2019s flighty Edina. \u201cYes, there\u2019s a bit of a fun Ab Fab dynamic between them,\u201d laughs Brooks. \u201cJanine can\u2019t understand how she\u2019s ended up with a daughter like her \u2013 she\u2019s not the mini-me she wanted! Poor Scarlett has been passed from pillar to post, as Janine was, but finding some family roots in the Square is an important discovery.\u201d<\/p>\n Brooks reflects on her own roots in the show, recalling how she won the part in 1999 at the age of 17 and was instantly thrust into the limelight working alongside veteran performers such as Mike Reid, Barbara Windsor and Pam St Clement.<\/p>\n\n \u201cIt was terrifying. We were avid EastEnders fans in my household when I was growing up, to even go into the building and see an audition script was huge. It was the biggest thing that had ever happened to me. I\u2019d moved from a very small town in north Wales and it was an amazing step, I was thrilled.<\/p>\n \u201cMy first day was scary but I thought I knew it all, I was a bit older than my years. It was intimidating looking back but there were words of advice from the likes of Barbara and Mike that were invaluable and put me at ease. You feel the pressure to do a good job and bring something to the character, and slowly you become part of the team.<\/p>\n \u201cThe person I learnt the most from at the start was Lucy Speed, who played Natalie Evans. I really admired her as an actress and how she handled the fame side of things, she kept herself to herself. We\u2019ve remained good friends. I learnt different things from different people along the way about what to do \u2013 and what not to do!\u201d<\/p> With so many memorable on-screen sparring partners, which one would Brooks bring back from those early days for a rematch? \u201cIt has to be Pat. Janine hated her at first but she eventually became a mother figure. I saw the clip of her deathbed scene the other day where Janine curls up next to her, it was so sweet. Would she be nice to her if she saw her again, though? She might revert to being horrible! It would be eventful if they were to be reunited, that\u2019s for sure.\u201d St Clement has already resurrected Pat as a ghost for Peggy\u2019s final episodes in 2016, so it\u2019s not out of the question\u2026<\/p>\n For now it\u2019s all about the future and what Janine\u2019s getting up to in 2021. What can Brooks tease on what\u2019s in store? \u201cJanine comes back in full force and I hope people aren\u2019t disappointed.\u201d Not much chance of that: her first week back sees her clash with Kat, be accused of kidnapping and leave Phil Mitchell for dead in a fire that\u2019s arguably her fault (\u201cIt\u2019s an accident!\u201d insists Brooks).<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll see a lot of Kat and Janine who are a fiery pairing. It\u2019s brilliant working with Jessie Wallace. Luckily for me there\u2019s some new eye candy on the Square, and Janine doesn\u2019t take long to get her claws into someone\u2026 there\u2019s a little bit of sexy action coming up! It\u2019s lust at first but who knows where it might go?<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a period of familiarising herself and figuring out who is useful to her and who is disposable. I did a great character session with the producers and writers on who Janine is now and who she might come up against, who she\u2019d enjoy a night out with and how she\u2019d respond in certain situations. In doing that I was reminded of the trouble she\u2019s caused for other characters, and there are quite a few I hadn\u2019t even remembered! There is so much scope but we can\u2019t have all these explosions at once so it\u2019ll be a slow burn with revisiting some grudges, like Stacey for instance. But there are definitely fireworks ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n Outside of EastEnders Brooks has notched up a broad range of credits: period dramas, numerous theatre roles and earning the Queen of the Jungle title in the 2012 run of I\u2019m a Celebrity<\/a>\u2026 Get Me Out of Here! Earlier this year she starred in Channel 5\u2019s Australian drama co-production Lie With Me<\/a>, but now she\u2019s back in Walford where many fans feel she belongs. After all this time, are there any untapped aspects of mean Janine left she\u2019d like to delve into?<\/p>\n \u201cPersonally I\u2019d love to explore her softer side,\u201d she confides. \u201cI like it when she falls for someone, opens her heart and lets them in, like she did with third husband, Ryan \u2013 only he cheated on her so it didn\u2019t last. Most of the time Janine is a scowling hard b***h, so it\u2019s nice when I get to smile!\u201d<\/p>\n Read more of our <\/b>Big RT Interviews<\/b><\/a>.<\/b><\/p>\n The Walford icon talks exclusively to Johnathon Hughes and promises her evil alter ego is back with a bang! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":3990,"template":"","categories":[2],"acf":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/09\/eastenders-charlie-brooks-teases-new-love-interest-for-janine-as-she-makes-an-explosive-return.jpg",620,413,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/09\/eastenders-charlie-brooks-teases-new-love-interest-for-janine-as-she-makes-an-explosive-return-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/09\/eastenders-charlie-brooks-teases-new-love-interest-for-janine-as-she-makes-an-explosive-return-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/09\/eastenders-charlie-brooks-teases-new-love-interest-for-janine-as-she-makes-an-explosive-return.jpg",620,413,false],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/09\/eastenders-charlie-brooks-teases-new-love-interest-for-janine-as-she-makes-an-explosive-return.jpg",620,413,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/09\/eastenders-charlie-brooks-teases-new-love-interest-for-janine-as-she-makes-an-explosive-return.jpg",620,413,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/09\/eastenders-charlie-brooks-teases-new-love-interest-for-janine-as-she-makes-an-explosive-return.jpg",620,413,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"The Walford icon talks exclusively to Johnathon Hughes and promises her evil alter ego is back with a bang!","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/3989"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\""eastenders\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2021\/08\/22978642-high--646a6c8.jpg?quality=90&crop=82px%2C0px%2C4160px%2C2771px&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"EastEnders\\"")
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