Priest and part-time actor the Revd Sorrel Shamel-Wood found herself taking on a very familiar role recently as she portrayed a vicar in a recent episode of Eastenders.
Sorrel, the children’s, families and schools chaplain at University Church in Oxford, took up acting as a hobby and applied for the part on the popular BBC soap. After filming the scenes in the summer, her part was screened in Tuesday night's show.
She said: “I work part-time, to balance my two vocations as a mother and a priest and this is a lovely hobby my family get to do together.
“It is really refreshing, meeting people who are completely outside of the church. Church can sometimes be a bit of a bubble, I have lived in Oxford for a long time now and a lot of my friends are clergy, I’m married to a priest. So meeting people who are nothing to do with a church is refreshing. Some people are nervous, and some people are really interested.”
Sorrel was there to officiate the funeral of Ben Mitchell’s husband Callum Highway’s father. Once an avid fan of the soap, Sorrel admits she was excited to meet the actors and experience Walford.
She added: “It was a long day, you do a lot of takes. It was a real funeral directors and I am comfortable working with funeral directors so that was a familiar dynamic and relationship. We started with us in the background and warmed up to the funeral scene.
“I saw some of the dressing rooms but none of the characters because we were filming on location. There was paparazzi there, trying to hide behind a tree to get a story. That’s not a world I was aware of!”