Patsy Palmer: ‘Rude’ Hollywood Agent Ruined My Career After Confrontation

Patsy Palmer has revealed her acting career was brutally derailed by a ‘rude’ Hollywood agent who sought revenge after she talked back to him in a meeting.

The EastEnders star, 53, who played fiery Bianca Jackson in the BBC soap, relocated to Los Angeles in 2014, in a bid to break America.

‘When I went to LA, I thought I was going there to be an actress,’ Patsy revealed on the Feel It In Your Soul podcast. 

‘Lots of things happened when I got there – a series of events. I was supposed to be doing a sitcom – didn’t happen – so we stayed. We thought we’ll give it a go anyway. 

‘I had a big agent. Straight away, it turned out that he was like everything that I’d watched in a sitcom of America.’

Patsy, who lives in Malibu with her husband, Richard Merkell, 60, and their children, added: ‘I can be quite outspoken and people can think that I’m confrontational, but I’m not. It takes a lot for me to say what I think. 

‘But this guy – straightaway, I thought he was so rude. Really rude. He was a typical “You’ll never work in this town again” [type]. 

‘Just because I answered him back, like, “How dare you speak to me like that! Who are you? I’ve just arrived here.” I think I asked a question and he said, “This is not the way we do things.”‘

The exchange proved fatal for her career. ‘My agent [in the UK] at the time didn’t really want to represent me anymore because I’d had this argument with this agent there,’ she added.

‘Their relationships with the US agents were clearly more important than the one I’d had with my agent for ten years. I realised in this industry no one gives a s*** really about anyone at the end of the day.’

After doing a single commercial for Best Buy in the US shortly after she moved there – which she admits she got through a producer friend – gave up auditioning entirely.

The star, who first joined EastEnders in 1993, had already left the show twice before her American move – first in 1999, then again in 2014 after a brief comeback – to focus on family life. 

She has four children: actor Charley Palmer Rothwell, 33, from her previous relationship with boxer Alfie Rothwell, and Fenton, 25, Emilia, 23, and Bertie, 14, with her former cab driver husband Richard.

But the Hollywood set-back made her question everything. ‘I started really looking at who am I?’ she said. 

‘It was a lot of revelations I was having about the industry, about my career, about where I stand. EastEnders is a major soap opera, and everything just happened really quickly.

‘I really wanted to be an actress there. I loved the way they write sitcoms. I’ve always been interested in sitcoms. I thought, yeah, I’d like to do a sitcom. I can do it. I got told all this s*** that I could do this and that by this agent – turned out he was a d***.

‘My own agent turned on me. This is a pretty evolved woman, but she turned on me. That’s how I see it.’

Patsy now works in Malibu as a DJ and wellness advocate. 

‘Through going there and being still enough and finding out who I am, it allows me to understand what I want to do with my life on a day-to-day basis and how I want to conduct myself,’ she added.

She also reflected on why she feels happier abroad: ‘I don’t like the culture here [in the UK]. And I don’t know that I particularly like the culture in America, but what I do love is the positivity.

‘There was certainly no positivity here for me, in my soul, when Ileft. Everybody was just walking around miserable.

‘I just wanted my children to have a bit of both – the grounding that comes from being English, and the positivity that comes from America. People say they’re fake, but they’re not. A lot of people in America are brought up to be very positive people.’

Despite the bruising start on the other side of the pond, she insists she has no regrets. ‘People just have one view of America that they see in the press or on TV. I love the nature. It’s beautiful. It’s expansive,’ she said. 

‘The ocean is so powerful [that] I don’t go in it. Metaphorically, for me, there’s parts of America that are so powerful… that maybe I’ve tried to dip my toe into, but I won’t go in.’

She added: ‘I’d love to work in a show there that’s written well, where I can get up in the morning, I can go to work, I can be with lovely people, I can do my job well… But the industry there, in a way, represents the toe in the ocean that I don’t want to go in.

‘And that’s a powerful choice for me. It doesn’t mean I’ve failed. My husband’s got an amazing job in America. So it works for him. But he’s not in the public eye. And he’s not in the industry.

‘There’s nothing about America for me that means I’ve failed.’