Shortland Street returns on Monday

Morgan Braithewaite’s (Bonnie Soper) sudden death leaves Ferndale reeling in shock on Shortland Street this week, when her dead body is discovered. A kind and generous woman, Morgan’s death devastates many – especially her sister, Nicole (Sally Martin).

When Morgan doesn’t come home from the Christmas party, Nicole and friends Gerald (Harry McNaughton) and Hunter (Lee Donoghue) grow concerned for her safety. Starting a search party, the trio are floored when they discover her body, not far from the vineyard where she was last seen.

“Nicole is completely shell-shocked. It doesn’t really sink in at first – it’s just the last thing that she imagined might have happened to her sister,” says Sally Martin. “I think she’s numb to the reality. It takes a while to really process.”

Despite the terrible news, Nicole attempts to continue on at work, in an effort to keep herself busy. But the fact that she has lost her sister soon catches up on her.

“Nicole finds Morgan’s death particularly hard, because she had just found a sort of kindred spirit in her,” says Martin. “Morgan and Nicole share the same father, but only met for the first time several months ago. She adored Morgan though, and they became incredible friends really quickly. This isn’t just losing a sister for Nicole – Morgan was her best friend and closest confident.”

With an immense amount of pain, anger and sadness, Nicole has an incredibly difficult journey ahead of her.

“Nicole has a lot of healing to do. She only just recently lost her dad, and Morgan’s death really adds to that pain,” says Martin. “I think she’s going to have a hard road through the grief. It’s all just been compounded having lost another person that meant so much to her.”

Good friends in real life too, Martin is sorry to see Soper leave Shortland Street.

“Bonnie is fantastic. She’s a very talented actor and it was really helpful to have someone who was willing to work together and get the most out of emotional scenes – and we had a lot. I’ll miss her – she was the person I worked with most when I first started on Shorty, so she helped wean me into the groove of things.”

Be sure to tune in this week to see the gripping aftermath of Shortland Street’s shocking Christmas cliffhanger.

If you have missed an episode, full episodes of Shortland Street will be available free online 12 hours after the show has aired on TV2. Go to tvnz.co.nz and click the ‘ondemand’ button.

- TVNZ

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