Linda Gray thinks fish and chips are "disgusting."
The ‘Hollyoaks’ actress – who was born and raised in Santa Monica, California – was forced to chew on the traditional British favourite when she reprised her role as Tabby Maxwell-Brown in ‘Hollyoaks’ for the funeral of her grandson, Nathan Nightingale (Jared Garfield), in scenes that will air tonight (24.02.17), and has admitted she couldn’t help but turn her nose up at the greasy grub.
She explained: "By the time I actually got to eat one it was freezing and raining! I had a hot water bottle on my lap and then Richard (Linnell, who plays Alfie Nightingale) said, ‘Oh Linda I have thermals on underneath my trousers’ and I only had thin little stockings on! I had a hot water bottle on my legs; I think I was even sitting on a hot water bottle.
"So by the time I ate the chips they were disgusting! My reaction in the episode to those chips was not acting! Richard and I had a great time laughing about it."
The 76-year-old actress made a cameo in the Channel 4 soap at the latter end of last year and bosses were over the moon when they persuaded her to return this year.
She said: "It was like coming back to my family, I loved it! It was lovely to see everybody again. David (Easter, who plays Mac), Lysette (Anthony, who plays Marnie) and I had lovely conversations about our families and David’s wife made me some chocolate cupcakes and we were just sharing things and catching up like old friends."
Although Linda was best known for portraying long-suffering wife Sue Ellen Ewing in CBS’ ‘Dallas’ between 1978 and 1989, she has admitted she thoroughly enjoyed her time on ‘Hollyoaks’ and learnt to love the role of Tabby.
Speaking to the Metro newspaper, she said: "I love playing Tabby. She is dysfunctional and she has her problems but no actor or person is one note. We have all flavours and colours and we can be happy one moment and sad the next, we go through various things. We are all human beings doing the best that we can.
"Tabby isn’t the warmest but she still cares and she deals with life the best she can although sometimes it’s not what the rest of us would do."