EastEnders star reveals ‘power struggle’ with Nicola as she vows to expose a shocking truth

Nicola Mitchell (Laura Doddington) is not exactly the most honest person on EastEnders.

She’s quite happily covered up some heinous actions that would haunt the nightmares of most people , including being responsible for the death of her son’s girlfriend, as well as quite happily watching her husband go toprison for a crime he didn’t commit.

With such a talent for duplicity, viewers might well be wondering where she learnt it from.

Enter Rose Hawkins, Nicola’s mother.

The apple definitely doesn’t fall far from the tree, as actress Marian McLoughlin reveals that this steely matriarch is more than a match for her wayward daughter.

‘She’s had to be very tough because of what happened to her.’ Marian explains. ‘She came from poverty, and had her house burnt down. Her husband came back from the war, things happened as we know. She’s got a very sharp tongue and uses it as a weapon. Particularly with Nicola, it’s a way of diminishing her retaining power. It’s all about power struggle, mother versus daughter.’

We saw Round One kick off in Monday’s where the Hawkins family descend on Walford and Nicola was less than happy to see them. While not estranged exactly, she always kept her mum and sisters at arms’ length. Now we see why.

Rose’s first act on the Square was to actively try and sabotage her daughter’s relationship with George Knight (Colin Salmon), making her out to be dangerous and unstable. Fortunately, George saw not swayed and insisted Nicola was kind, loving and caring. ‘Nicola is all of those things and more’ Rose purred. ‘I just hope you never see the ‘more’.

Mee-ow.

Soon enough, George got to see than ‘more’ for himself when he and Rose walked into the Prince Albert… only to find Nicola threatening her niece Megan’s abusive boyfriend with an icepick as he was tied to a chair.

Sure, Nicola’s got a dark side. But is she truly as bad as Rose says? Why does she have such a downer on her own daughter?

It all stems back to Nicola’s father, the late Mister Hawkins.

We’ve already heard Nicola confide traumatic memories of her dad in George and Eve Panesar-Unwin (Heather Peace). She describes him as an abusive and violent man who would drunkenly lash out physically on both her and Rose. He would also freeze his daughter out for days, barely able to look her in the eye.

However, Rose remembers things very differently. She describes Mister Hawkins to George as the man who kept the family together.

Why do the two women have such vastly different recollections? That all harks back to the day Mister Hawkins died, as revealed this week in a shocking backstory.

When Nicola discovered her dad attacking her mum, she was quick to intervene and warned him to leave. Despite Rose’s pleas for Nicola to stay out of it, Nicola wouldn’t budge, and her drunken dad got in his car and left. Rose warned that if anything happened to her husband, she’d never forgive Nic.

Sure enough, the abuser died in the car crash and Rose kept her word, even trying to turn Nicola’s sisters Gemma (Patricia Potter) and Jodie (Anna Constable) against her.

So why is Rose in her daughter’s back yard if she hates her so much. Marian McLoughlin spills the tea.

‘She’s there to sort out the truth of what happened all those years ago. coming with her version of the truth. It’s up to the audience to decide who is telling the truth.’

Wait. Does this mean that Nicola could be making the whole thing up? Or embelisshing details to make herself look better?

That’s certainly a possibility according to showrunner Ben Wadey, who revealed what drew him to telling this story with the epnoymous EastEnders character.

‘Nicola is not a bad liar.’ Ben chuckled. ‘She is quite comfortable spinning her own version of events. What I found really interesting through the story is us hearing Nicola’s version and then hearing different versions of the past. What her mum’s version of the past is compared to her sisters’.

‘It’s true of so many families. Everybody has these shared collective experiences of things that happened many years ago, but everyone remembers them slightly differently. It just creates endless drama. We will uncover things that will go in directions you weren’t necessarily expecting.’