EastEnders star Natalie Cassidy has revealed that she had to rush her nine-year-old daughter to A&E after she broke her arm again.
Cassidy, best known for her role as trumpet-playing drama-magnet Sonia Fowler on the long-running BBC soap, shares Joanie with her fiance Marc Humphreys. She has an older daughter, 15-year-old Eliza, from a previous relationship.
The actor explained on her Life with Nat podcast that Joanie broke her arm in an accident at school, mere weeks after she’d had surgery on the same arm following another injury.
Cassidy said she felt as if she was “having a nervous breakdown” after being alerted to the accident. “Joanie’s broken her arm again,” she said. “Same arm – smashed to pieces. General anaesthetic, same operation.”
She continued: “I’d done a little bit of work in the morning at home. [Marc] went outside, put the paddling pool up, cut all the grass – thinking we’re going to have a few days, like a mini holiday, at home. And then the phone rang. [Joanie] had slipped over in the hall before doing PE. I’m speechless. It’s so traumatic.”
“I felt I was going to have a nervous breakdown. I’m being really honest here. I really fell to pieces. I was not in a good place. Just her little body – and the medication and the trauma of it all.”
Cassidy said that Joanie has been tested for “some sort of deficiency” which may be causing the ease with which she breaks bones, but that nothing has been found.
“She’s had full blood tests, and everything is in range,” she said. “It’s absolutely perfect. The consultant actually said, ‘I do think it’s just really bad luck’.”
In February, Cassidy voiced her support for the proposed ban on social media usage for under 16s, which was officially announced by the government last month.
Backing a campaign called Big Tech’s Little Victims, she revealed that she was horrified by the results of an algorithm experiment to uncover what content platforms show children who sign up at the current minimum user age of 13.
In just a week, four fake profiles set up by the campaign were served hundreds of pieces of concerning content. “I cannot tell you how shocking it is,” Cassidy said. “They are looking at sexualised content, racism, violence, misogyny, extreme dieting going towards anorexia, self-harming and even suicidal idealisation. It’s incredible.”
Cassidy, who joined EastEnders at the age of 10, announced her departure from the soap in 2025, and has since ventured into podcasting with her show Life with Nat.
Last year she admitted that it was “not a good move” to appear in a series of weight loss videos in the Noughties.
She lost four stone while taking part in the videos, titled Then & Now and The Perfect Ten, which earnt her £100,000 in 2007 and 2013.
