14 August 2023 , 18:03
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Emmerdale actress Susan Cookson has shared how she was "saved" by a phone call following the death of her soap star husband.
The Wendy Posner star was ready to give up on her career all together after her Coronation Street actor husband Malcolm Scates sadly died. She was set to take on retirement, when she received a phone call out of the blue. Susan was offered the role of nurse Wendy in the ITV soap, just as she was driving to meet a nursing manager for advice on how to retrain in the profession.
“I was at a bit of a crossroads in my life through one thing and another and I decided that I wanted a more regular job. I started to think about changing careers and going into nursing," she told The Mirror. "My husband, who is sadly no longer with us, had been very poorly and I’d nursed him. And I’d played a lot of doctors and nurses over the years, so it was a career I knew a bit about. I was in my car, about 10 minutes away from this meeting, when my phone went. It was Emmerdale producer Jane Hudson. I worked with her many moons ago on Casualty, but I’d not spoken to her for years.
Susan was just about to retrain as a nurse when she got the call from ITV (ITV)Susan explained: "She said to me: ‘Look, I’m going to cut to the chase, we’ve got a new character and there’s nobody I’d rather play it than you. I know you’d be perfect for it. Do you want to come and live in the village with us? Do you want to have a think about it? And I said: ‘No, I don’t need to, the answer is yes!’ And then she added: ‘Oh, and by the way, she’s a nurse…’”
The actress joined the soap in 2019 and it hasn't been plain sailing for Susan’s character Wendy since she arrived in the Dales. Away from the cameras, Susan was married to fellow actor Malcolm Scates, who has also appeared in countless British TV shows including The Inbetweeners.
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The couple wed in 1993 and had two children together, Ruari and Dan, while living in Sheffield. Just like his wife, Malcolm had multiple soap roles over the years, including five different roles on Corrie from 1986 until 2010. His biggest role in Weatherfield was as brewery boss Philip Newton, who had run ins with Bet Lynch and Fred Elliott and is the father of Henry Newton, who got into a relationship with Gemma Winter.
Over on Emmerdale, Malcolm had a long-standing part as PC Mitchum, who investigated Eric Pollard's antique frauds in 1993. He also played Carol Wareing's criminal husband Gordon in July 2001 and was back in July 2012 as Henry Lewis. Sadly, Malcolm tragically passed away in September 2016.