Doctors Doctors: Michelle's afraid, very afraid...

Receptionist Ruth Pearce returns to The Mill in this week's Doctors - and nurse Michelle Corrigan isn't at all happy, as actress Donnaleigh Bailey explains...

Ruth returns to work this week following her breakdown. Why is Michelle particularly anxious?
"Well, Ruth's Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) came to a head. They were best friends but then Ruth started to think she was Michelle, tracked down Michelle's half-brother, the love of her life, and was in bed with him when Michelle walked in on them. The last time Michelle saw Ruth, she was being carted off to a mental institution."

So, Michelle's not looking forward to Ruth coming back to work at The Mill, then?
"At the moment, Michelle is full of all this betrayal. She doesn’t want to talk about Ruth, she doesn’t want to hear anything about her. She’s so angry and bitter. Also, Michelle is very frightened of her, or rather she's frightened of the same thing happening again."

How does this situation affect Michelle's bubbly personality?
"Despite Michelle being fun and flirty, she is a good nurse and she wants to help people. So putting her in a predicament of not being able to use her nurse's head and see that Ruth has an illness and just being consumed with this hate, this betrayal, this bitterness, it’s like she’s a completely different character. Michelle's in her darkest place."

Is Michelle happier when Julia offers to keep the two of them apart?
"Julia has been keen to get Ruth back into work to aid her recovery but Michelle's very scared. And she feels her concerns are being ignored, so she also feels betrayed by nearly everybody at The Mill. Julia sees that Michelle is broken and decides that the best option is to keep them apart with Ruth at The Mill and Michelle at the Campus."

Surely they are going to cross paths at some point...
"In one episode, a patient has to be taken to The Mill and Michelle panics about seeing Ruth and can't take him. She feels bad about that but the pure fear of Ruth consumes her at times. We do cross paths at some point, especially as people are so keen to see a reconciliation between them. Let's just say, it's very prickly between the two of them."

Do we begin to see a completely different side to Michelle?
"At the moment, she's on this horrible destructive path. She’s so bitter towards everyone at The Mill. Everybody cares about Ruth and it’s almost like nobody has seen that actually she was personally attacked. Michelle goes on a downward spiral for a while until she gets to rock bottom, where the only place to go then is up."

And it looks like the only way is up for Doctors following its hat-trick of awards at the British Soap Awards recently...
"I know, how fantastic is that? We work so hard all year round and to be acknowledged by your peers and by the public is just fantastic. It's given us a really big morale boost. Just because we're on in the daytime, we're still very good and Vivien rape storyline was exceptional."

Click here to watch whatsontv.co.uk's new weekly soaps video preview, the Soap Scoop