EastEnders' Jaime Winstone says Barbara Windsor sent 'sign from above' over Peggy role
ok.co.ukFive years after playing the late Dame Barbara Windsor in BBC biopic Babs, Jaime Winstone has stepped into her shoes once again.The 37-year-old actress appears as a younger version of the icon’s most famous character, Peggy Mitchell, in a flashback episode of EastEnders and says, “It’s a real honour.” While her role in Babs covered Barbara’s childhood, early romances and rise to fame in the Carry On films in detail, Jaime felt like her “journey with Barbara” hadn’t really finished and revealed she even felt she had received a sign from the late soap favourite to accept her latest portrayal. “When I got offered the part, I thought, ‘God, is this something I should do?
Am I risking getting typecast?’" says Jaime. "So I did actually have a little word with Barbara up above and I got my sign and I felt like it was written for me.
I felt like I got the go-ahead [from Barbara] and Scott [Mitchell, her widower] approved it.” The sign that Barbara sent Jaime was “a little blonde butterfly that kept coming in my garden”, she recalls, laughing. “I kept thinking, ‘That’s strange,’ as I’ve got a little dog and we don’t normally get too many butterflies because he goes for them.
So that was my sign. I thought, that’s her. You know when you know.” “When we shot Babs, I got to work with her very closely and became great friends with her," she added. "There were things you couldn’t study or be taught in terms of the way she worked with people, how she touched people’s shoulders when she was talking to them, or held your hands when she was advising you.
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