{"id":718478,"date":"2026-07-30T04:40:21","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T04:40:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/718478\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T04:40:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T04:40:21","slug":"eastenders-legend-and-ted-lasso-star-reveals-she-received-death-threats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/718478\/","title":{"rendered":"EastEnders legend and Ted Lasso star reveals she received “death threats”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Annette Badland, the former EastEnders<\/a> star, has revealed she received death threats while appearing in the BBC One soap.<\/p>\n

The actress, who also stars in Ted Lasso and Midsomer Murders, appeared as twisted Babe Smith between 2014 and 2017.<\/p>\n

The character raised the Carter kids when their real mother, Sylvie (Linda Marlowe), abandoned them. She had a resentment towards the clan and lifelong jealousy towards her sibling, which surfaced as sinister manipulation and blackmail over the years.<\/p>\n

Babe conspired with Dean Wicks (Matt Di Angelo) to bring Shirley down, had a long-running feud with Abi Branning (Lorna Fitzgerald) and even tried to kill Sylvie.<\/p>\n

Eventually, she was sent packing<\/a> by niece and great nephew Shirley (Linda Henry) and Mick (Danny Dyer).<\/p>\n

Now, in a new interview with fellow soap star Sally Lindsay on her A Night In podcast<\/a>, Badland has revealed that she didn’t get the best response from viewers during her stint.<\/p>\n

\"Annette<\/p>\n

Annette Badland played Babe Smith in EastEnders.\u00a0A Night in with Sally Lindsay<\/p>\n

“Because I was leaving, they racked up my villainy and [she was] actually thrown out, literally thrown out of the pub by Danny [Dyer],” the star explained.<\/p>\n

“But I had death threats. [There was] a call from the BBC security saying: ‘We’re getting death threats and there are red alert code words in this, so we have to take it seriously.'”<\/p>\n

Badland was then told not to tell people where she was going, and not to use social media.<\/p>\n

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\"Radio<\/p>\n

“They eventually traced it to just outside Liverpool, a school. They didn’t think it was a child because it was a public computer,” she continued.<\/p>\n

“They didn’t feel they could get much further, and that took about a month to six weeks.”<\/p>\n

Stunned by the revelation, Lindsay commented that her guest was effectively under “house arrest”, to which Badland agreed.<\/p>\n

Read more:<\/p>\n

Visit our dedicated EastEnders<\/a> page for all the latest news, interviews and spoilers.<\/p>\n

Add EastEnders to your watchlist on the Radio Times: What to Watch app<\/a> \u2013 download now for daily TV recommendations, features and more.<\/p>\n

Check out more of our Soaps<\/a> coverage or visit our TV Guide<\/a> and Streaming Guide <\/a>to find out what’s on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Annette Badland, the former EastEnders star, has revealed she received death threats while appearing in the BBC One…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":718479,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[96,391,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-718478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-tv","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=718478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/718479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=718478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=718478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=718478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}