Seven months pregnant and dazzling in panto in Crawley

Carrie is expecting her first child on February 29 next year, capping a fabulous few months.

“I had my own solo tour in the middle of the year which was great and that overlapped with The Crown Jewels, a play that I was doing and then I also found out that I am pregnant. I'm now actually feeling so much better than I was. The first trimester was really hard. It was all a new experience and I was just opening The Crown Jewels at The Garrick! But I do feel so much better now, thank goodness!”

Crawley’s will Carrie’s second panto, a repeat of the role of Carrabosse which she did in Sleeping Beauty last year. The show is at The Hawth from Friday, December 8-Sunday, December 31 (tickets on hawth.co.uk or by calling The Hawth box office, 10am-4pm, Monday to Friday on 01293 553636).

“Last year was the first Christmas that I had had free for a long time. I had tended always to have long contracts over Christmas, but not last year and I just wondered if there was a pantomime that I might be able to do, and (producer) Paul Hendy asked if I'd like to be the villain in this one. I just thought ‘Yes, that's the part for me!’ But it was the fact really that I've never done panto before and I love panto. I hadn’t actually seen a panto until I was 19. My parents took me to lots of theatre shows and I just saw so much but for some reason we never went to panto and then I saw one at a time I think when I was really old enough to appreciate it. And I just absolutely loved it.

“So I did it last year and it was much harder work than I ever expected it to be. If anyone ever talks about pantomimes now, I know that it's absolutely not for the faint-hearted. It's 13 shows a week and it's very intense but it really was just so much fun and it just really gears you up for Christmas. It is certainly much more fun to be doing a pantomime at Christmas than it is to be doing Les Mis! Panto is just so absolutely much a part of Christmas.”

But Carrie certainly learned from last year – quite apart from the fact of being pregnant this year – the importance of pacing herself: “Last year I went straight into it and did 800 per cent on the first night. I think maybe this time 100 per cent might be enough! But also I don’t think I had really appreciated just how spectacular it was. Last year I had these fantastic velociraptors that were my character’s pets and they were extraordinary. They were like proper dinosaurs that roared and blinked on stage. It was amazing.”

Carrie is loving the thought of being the villain again: “My favourite time of the year is Halloween and I always get my Halloween decorations up in mid-August. I just love it and I think it's because my birthday is October 22 and my birthday just always felt synonymous with Halloween. It just felt like the same thing for me so now I get the chance to be a villain in panto which is really like combining two fantastic things, Halloween and Christmas!”