'Hard to do' Comeback Scenes

Teletext November 2003

Julia Watson has returned to Casualty as Charlie Fairhead's ex-wife Baz after a five-year absence, but she has hinted this may be the last time.

She tells Teletext: "I'm only back for eight episodes and I'm sworn to secrecy about what happens to Baz. But I'm not a permanent fixture."

Watson, 50, has flitted in and out of the show since it began in 1986 but she quit after Baz married Charlie in 1998 and then abruptly left him with their son Louis.

The actress says fans of the series can expect fireworks between her character and Charlie when she returns this Saturday.

She says: "Charlie will get a big shock as Baz returns from Canada with her third husband Dan in tow so there's no chance of a reconciliation. She's come back because her father Kenneth (Frank Windsor) has terminal lung cancer and she wants to spend time with him so Charlie isn't exactly dominating her thoughts."

Baz and her ex-husband have had a fiery history in Casualty. One-time doctor Baz is returning to haunt Charlie (Derek Thompson), 17 years after their romance began. She got pregnant but had an abortion without telling him.

She then left him in 1988 to work in London, got married and began an affair again with him in 1995. Pregnant again, this time she kept their baby Louis. They split again but married in 1998 before Baz walked out on him once more.

Filming Christmas scenes in Lapland proved a bonus for the actress. Her character takes son Louis, eight, to see Santa. Charlie, Baz's husband Dan and her sickly father also make the trip.

Watson says: "It was fantastic, I had never seen snow like it and we saw the Northern Lights. It wasn't too cold — only minus five — and we got to see Father Christmas too."

The actress says that she wouldn't be able to cope with making 40 episodes of Casualty a year. She was used to a more leisurely 13 when the hospital drama began in 1986.

"I wouldn't be able to commit myself to that workload because it would mean being away from home and my family — poet David Harsent and daughter Hannah, 13 — for too long. That's why I left in the first place."

But Watson admits to have relished her return as Baz. She says: "I was filming for four months in Bristol and it was great to team up again with Derek Thompson (Charlie) and Ian Bleasdale (Josh).

"I left to spend more time with my daughter Hannah but I still managed to do two series of ITV's kids' drama Welcome To Orty Fou. Being married to a poet I've also edited two books of poems for weddings and funerals for Penguin."