Casualty star teases Donna's prison exit after horror crash

In conversations she has had ahead of her dramatic new storyline in Casualty, Jaye Jacobs was shocked to be told that after working a double shift, a doctor or anaesthetist can get a taxi home on the NHS – but a nurse isn’t able to.

Donna Jackson’s future at Holby City Hospital is on the line in tonight’s episode after being involved in a car crash. The ordeal took place after Donna worked multiple back to back shifts, with the exhaustion leading to her nearly falling asleep at the wheel.

In the aftermath, Donna has spiralled. She is trying to remain in control while working as Nurse Manager in the ED, but given that she’s facing the prospect of time behind bars, it certainly didn’t come as a surprise to us when Jaye described her character’s life as a ‘mess’!

With Donna’s fate being revealed tonight, we caught up with Jaye Jacobs to discuss what’s ahead for her character, why she reprised her role as Donna after Holby City’s axing, and whether she thinks Donna should go to prison…

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‘It’s just a lot, isn’t it!’, she told us.

‘She’s had a real pile on in a really short space of time and her life is difficult, anyway. I think single motherhood can be really empowering but it just hasn’t been that way for her. And so it’s hard. Mama’s got to work, Mama’s got to bring home the bacon. She’s trying to be a role model and it’s all kind of colliding.’

‘She’s an absolute mess. And I think she has had a few years of experience of gliding across the pond and I think that’s quite a managerial kind of role to take as well and she really sees that – there’s so many younger people in the show and she really feels that way of responsibility and knows that she kind of has to lead by example, by keeping it all pretty calm.

Jaye added: ‘But I do know that she locks herself in the loo and is a total mess. So yeah, I think that’s the reality. And I think to be honest, it’s so big and the concept of literally losing the last 20 years of becoming someone else, of losing her family, probably her home and going to prison is just actually too much for her to conceive.’

Reflecting on whether Donna would actually cope if she went to prison, Jaye said: ‘I think she would really, really struggle, because she can sometimes come off like a bit of a floater but that’s not who she is, that’s not the core of her heart. I think she’d front it for a little bit, and then I think she would totally crash because I’m pretty sure in prison, there’s no kind of private moments. She would get found out really, really quickly. But then, I think there’d be a bit of a twist, because I have thought about this!

‘I think she’s quite good at one-to-one relationships and I feel like systematically she could go through and make those bonds and relationships with people and that is how she would survive. She’s not a hard nut but she would make those personal relationships and then in the end, she would wield her own kind of quite special but very powerful magic through those connections.’

Elsewhere, recent episodes of the BBC One medical drama have seen Donna and Max (Nigel Harman) do a little more than chat about their work during catch-ups in the office.

We asked Jaye about Donna’s newfound connection with her boss and whether her character should be with someone like Max or Dylan (William Beck)…

‘I think they [Donna and Max] are two people who are lost and have found each other in the dark. And that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s, you know, Mr or Mrs Right, but it means that they are a light for each other at this moment and I think she really needs that. I can’t speak for him, but I know that she really needs that.

She explained: ‘I think Dylan would, obviously he has a bit less going on, so clearly, he would just be a lot more stable for her and probably be able to stabilise her. It seems that Max is probably not in a position to do that because obviously he’s got a lot going on himself.

‘I just want the best for her and ultimately, the best never really is kind of choosing a guy, the best is sorting herself out.’

‘I absolutely don’t think she should get sent down because it was an accident’, Jaye said, reflecting on whether she thinks Donna should face some sort of consequence for what happened.

‘It’s not like she was drunk, she didn’t feel it was as risky as it then turned out to be, which is really tough. I don’t think she should get sent down and I think she had really good intentions. I think her big mistake, obviously, was to lie because she was fearful! I think she just felt threatened, and she reacted badly and at the end of the day, she did everything she could to put it right.

‘She confessed and that’s huge, I can’t imagine that happens a lot and I think ultimately, she should have redemption.’

We of course know Donna from BBC One’s Holby City. In the show, Donna’s new job involved her walking down a few stairs in the hospital to the ED but in real life, Jaye Jacobs now films in Cardiff after spending so long at Elstree, where Holby City was filmed.

Pondering over why she decided to reprise the role in an entirely different show, Jaye said: ‘I think, without putting too fine a point on it, really the fans. I mean, genuinely, everyone was like, “you’re going into Casualty right?”. And also, Holby ended abruptly and there were a lot of people whose storylines we were kind of looking to get wrapped up and they couldn’t do everybody and it felt like…my contract actually finished before Holby finished and it was a case of, I don’t have to stay, I could go now but I felt like I owed it the show, I felt I really, really owed it to the show.

‘It was nearly 20 years [at Holby]! I think I stayed at Holby for the show, I didn’t stay for Donna or for myself. And I think to go to Casualty, it was more for Donna and myself, if that makes sense. To have storylines and for me as an actor to get to do some stuff.’

Discussing how Donna has changed since she arrived in Casualty, Jaye explained: ‘Essentially, what happens is, you do a show for a long time, Holby people get to know you, and inevitably they end up kind of writing you.

‘That’s kind of what happens – when you look at the first couple of episodes of Holby, Donna was nasty which is interesting and then she kind of, you know, morphed into this kind of very nice person. And then in Casualty, it’s literally a different perspective having people that don’t know you as well write what they think.’

Teasing us with what’s to come for her character, Jaye finished the chat by saying:

‘It’s hard! She keeps having those little exciting moments with Max.

‘All I’m going to say is, they’re good at locations…’

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