We sat down with the one and only Rita Simons to chat about Eastenders, Panto (t’is the season after all), and what comes next for the star in 2026.
- Auditioning for the Role of Roxy Mitchell
- A Messy Departure And Going Back to the square?
- The Hollyoaks Years
- Walking Away With Nothing But Faith
- Rita on Reality and Traitors
- On Newly-Married Life
- And Finally, Why Are the Christmas specials so popular, Rita?
“I remember Watching The Very First Eastenders Episode”
Rita grew up watching Eastenders.
“I was a massive fan. I watched the first ever episode with my mum, which must have been back in the 80s. I was born in the 70s so a kid in the 80s. EastEnders was a huge deal”.
Rita shares that she used to sit down with her mum in the living room and watch it.
“I always knew I wanted to be in the industry. I was actually a singer before I was an actor. Well, I thought I was a singer, but it turns out I was an actress”.
The older Rita got, the more she thought: ‘I really want to do that show’. So when she landed the role of Roxy, it was a complete dream come true.
“Because it was the biggest, well still is, the biggest soap in the land”.
Auditioning for the role of Roxy Mitchell
At the time Rita was a singer, and pregnant with twins.
Then her agent called one day and said that a role had come up on Eastenders. ‘Roxy Mitchell’. While her agent knew she didn’t want to pursue acting at that time, they knew she wanted to play Phil’s cousin on EastEnders.
“That’s my dream role!”
The audition process went on for four weeks. Rita and Sam Womack (cast as Ronnie Mitchell) spied each other over the audition room and they kept ending up in the same readings. A lot of similar-looking girls to Rita and Sam Womack were getting whittled down week by week.
“We just got on so well from the start. It was the most anxious four weeks of my life, but eventually we got the call. Ronnie and Roxy Mitchell were born”.
What made the girls’ partnership so successful was that they became (and still are) very close. In fact, they call themselves “twin flames”. They had similar backgrounds, similar outlooks. Anything that shaped Sam shaped Rita. Anything that shaped Rita shaped Sam.
“Whether that’s good, bad, trauma, not trauma. We were just two peas in a pod from day one”.
A Messy Departure And Going Back to the square?
It wasn’t Sam and Rita’s decision to leave however.
“It was quite messy, and there’s a lot of stuff I can’t really go into. It was a very different time. It was certainly not our decision. We were absolutely devastated. But life goes on”.
Rita has lived in Liverpool for three years, but does have the yearning to move back down south. EastEnders feels even more like home to her because it’s where she’s from originally. In fact, she always lived around the corner from the filming studios. On going back on the show, for Rita (and Sam), EastEnders is home.
“Yeah, of course we would go back. It would be silly to say no”.
The Hollyoaks Years
After COVID, Rita had been doing a lot of theatre, but TV is where she feels most at home.
“I turned down a theatre tour that would have been good, easy, and great money. But my soul wasn’t feeling it. Then I was offered Hollyoaks, and I thought: “What have I got to lose?”
After it was announced Rita was joining Hollyoaks, there was a noticeable gap before she appeared. That was because Rita wasn’t always intended to play the part of Marie.
“I was originally coming in as Glynis’s daughter, who played my mum in EastEnders. Then there was a shuffle round upstairs, and they decided to change it to have me as Arlo’s mum. There was a huge hiatus, but it had already been announced, so they just had to wait”.
Walking Away With Nothing But Faith
Rita moved up to Liverpool. Even though she loved it, she never intended it to be a long-term thing, and she started to feel a real pull back to London.
“I’ve got really good in my old age at listening to my heart. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do Hollyoaks anymore. It’s that I really missed home. I was finding it really difficult going up and down the motorway all the time. I had to organise a day off just to travel down to see my kids and my mum”.
Rita shares her belief that life is for family and for friends.
“Of course we’ve got to work, but the pull to London was too much. And I always honour what my heart tells me to do”.
Rita didn’t have anything lined up, except faith.
“I firmly believe you can’t open new doors until you shut the ones behind you. I’m having loads of lovely meetings about dramas for next year 2026, and I think if I had been at Hollyoaks, I wouldn’t have been able to do that”.
Rita on Reality and Traitors
“I’d do Traitors because I just love it. It’s amazing. It’s my favourite show on telly. But anything like the jungle again, I don’t think so. Pilgrimage was lovely, but anything like that, no”.
Rita is a fan of Celebrity Traitors. She’s aware that as soon as pantomime ends, the next series of Traitors is coming out, and her and her husband, Ben Marlow, are excited to watch it. Rita thinks she’d be really bad at being a Traitor.
“I’m a really good actress, but a terrible liar to people I know, so it would be hard”.
On Newly-Married Life
Both Rita and Ben are doing panto at the moment. He’s the dame, and she’s Captain Hook at The Grove’s Dunstable theatre.
“Married life is lovely. Neither of us drink, and we’re enjoying a sort of ‘middle age‘. It’s become more about family and doing things we enjoy”.
And Finally, Why Are the Christmas specials so popular, Rita?
“I actually think, not that I’m an expert, but I would say EastEnders led the way for Christmas carnage. The earliest I can remember would be Dirty Den and Angie and getting the divorce papers”.
Rita goes on to explain that Christmas Day isn’t always shiny.
“It’s quite often a big fat mess for a lot of people. There’s a lot of people not living the shiny stuff you see on Instagram. The real stuff is the interesting stuff, and EastEnders always did that really well. You can see Christmas trees on every channel. You turn to EastEnders, you’re going to see something horrific, and then others follow suit”.
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