Former EastEnders star Natalie Cassidy has spoken candidly about a frightening few weeks for her family after her nine-year-old daughter Joanie broke her arm for the second time, requiring another trip to A&E and a repeat surgery.
Cassidy, who played Sonia Fowler on the BBC soap for years before leaving the show in 2025, shares Joanie with fiancé Marc Humphreys, and also has a teenage daughter, Eliza, from an earlier relationship.
Speaking on her podcast, Life with Nat, the actor described the shock of the second injury, which happened at school, just weeks after Joanie had undergone surgery to repair the original break. She explained that her partner had spent the morning setting up a paddling pool and cutting the grass, thinking the family was about to enjoy a few relaxed days at home, when the phone rang to say Joanie had slipped over in the hallway before PE class.
Cassidy was open about how much the experience affected her mental state. She described feeling close to a breakdown, saying she was being completely honest and that she really fell apart, describing it as a time when she was not in a good place at all.
According to Cassidy, doctors have tested Joanie for a possible deficiency that might explain her tendency to break bones, but her blood work has come back entirely normal, with a consultant suggesting the repeated injuries may simply be down to bad luck rather than any underlying medical issue.
This isn’t the first time Cassidy has used her platform to raise concerns about children’s wellbeing. Earlier this year she backed a campaign called Big Tech’s Little Victims, supporting a proposed ban on social media use for under-16s, after being horrified by an experiment showing what content platforms serve to children signing up at the current minimum age of 13. She said fake profiles created for the campaign were served large amounts of concerning material within a week, including sexualised content, racism, violence, misogyny, content promoting extreme dieting and anorexia, self-harm, and even suicidal ideation, calling the results incredible.
Cassidy, who joined EastEnders at the age of 10, announced her departure from the soap in 2025 and has since moved into podcasting with her show Life with Nat.
Reflecting on her own past, Cassidy admitted last year that appearing in a series of weight loss videos in the 2000s had not been a good move, despite the fact that the videos, titled Then & Now and The Perfect Ten, saw her lose four stone and earned her £100,000 in 2007 and 2013.
Reference:
White, A. (2026, June 30). EastEnders star Natalie Cassidy ‘not in a good place’ after daughter hospitalised. The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk
