Holly Cunningham

Holly Geri Victoria Madonna Cunningham (previously Hutchinson) is a fictional character from the long-running Channel 4 soap opera Hollyoaks. Holly's first on-screen appearance was her birth on 25 December 1997, before departing in 2001.

Holly made further appearances in 2002 and later in 2004, played by Karis Sharkey.

In 2008, Holly returned to the serial played by Lydia Waters. In 2009, Holly paid a minor role in the second series of Hollyoaks Later, and featured in the storyline of her mother Cindy (Stephanie Waring) and Tony Hutchinson's (Nick Pickard) wedding, despite Darren Osborne (Ashley Taylor-Dawson) and Jacqui McQueen (Claire Cooper) teaming up to split the engaged couple up before the wedding. Waters then departed in 2010.

In November 2012, the character was reintroduced, now played by Wallis Day. Day as fifteen-year-old Holly appeared in the sixth series of Hollyoaks Later, in a dark storyline that featured Holly go on a trip to an isolated country mansion with Esther Bloom (Jazmine Franks) to celebrate Esther's eighteenth birthday, along with Holly's boyfriend Callum Kane (Laurie Duncan), Esther's girlfriend Tilly Evans (Lucy Dixon) and Tilly's strange and mysterious new housemate Jade Hedy (Lucy Gape). Shortly after, Day made her final appearance on 22 October 2013.

The character was immediately recast, with actress Amanda Clapham taking over the role; she made her first appearance as Holly on 19 November 2013.

Casting

In 2008, Lydia Waters auditioned for the role of Holly. She was one of 54 candidates up for the role of Holly, the character of which who had previously appeared in Hollyoaks between 1997 and 2001, with returns in 2002 and 2004, played by Karis Sharkey. After several audition stages at the shows studios in Liverpool, Waters was given the role of Holly and began filming in April 2008. She made her first appearance in June 2008. Speaking of Water's portrayal of Holly's character, a Channel 4 spokesperson stated: "She will be quite a stroppy eleven-year-old who knows her own mind — like her mum's character. There's a big storyline involving Max [Cunningham] at the end of June, and they will be involved in that".^[1]

In December 2011, Hollyoaks producer Emma Smithwick told Daniel Kilkelly of Digital Spy in an interview, "We've talked about Holly, but again, there have been a lot of new characters coming in and we'd quite like to keep the cast a bit more stable... Once we deliver a fuller character for Cindy, then the question of Holly would come into play". This indicated that there were no current plans to re-introduce Holly into the series.^[2]

In October 2012 it was announced that Holly would return on 14 November now played by Wallis Day.^[3] Kilkelly announced that the character would cause "mischief" upon her return, stating that she initially "seems to be a well-mannered and sophisticated 14-year-old at first glance. However, her true bratty nature is soon revealed and it seems that she could be a mini-Cindy". Cindy is unaware of Holly's resentment of her due to her unstable upbringing.^[3] Speaking of her casting, Day said: "I am thrilled to have been cast as Holly Cunningham, as I've been a fan of Hollyoaks for many years [...] Holly is a really exciting character with plenty of surprises up her sleeve, so you'd better watch to see what happens".^[3]

Stephanie Waring who plays Holly's mother Cindy praised Day saying she is "excited to work with her" and thinks she is going to "be a little bit of a mini-Cindy, but maybe even worse!" Waring expressed shock at some of the lines the character says and added that she would find it "interesting to see how the audience reacts to that, but I certainly like her". Waring also noted that "Wallis is actually older than Holly, so I'm not happy about having an 18-year-old daughter, because I don't look old enough! But obviously Holly is 14, so she's a lot younger than Wallis. I was 18 when I was playing Cindy as 15, so it's the same sort of scenario. Wallis reminds me of me, but she's a lot more beautiful than I was!"^[4]

When Day's portrayal of Holly first began appearing on screen, she was at first generally quite unpopular, and many viewers complained about the realism of an adult-looking 18-year-old playing a 14 year old. Waring defended the recasting through social networking site Twitter, saying that it does not matter that she looks older than 15 as a lot of 15 year olds look like adults. Waring added that if Hollyoaks wanted somebody who looked like Waters they would not have recast the character.^[5]

In October 2013, shortly after the sixth series of Hollyoaks Later that Holly was a main character in, it was announced that Wallis Day would be re-cast after less than a year of being on-screen as Holly. It was announced that the character would be replaced with Amanda Clapham taking over the role. Executive producer Bryan Kirkwood said: "We're very sad to see Wallis go but respect her decision. I felt Holly is too good a character to lose, so we have recast the role and fans will see her later this autumn." A show spokesperson added: "A decision was made to recast the role ahead of some major storylines for the character which will take Holly in a different direction. Wallis Day has been a popular cast member and we wish her every success in her future." Clapham made her first onscreen appearance on 19 November 2013.

Storylines

Holly Cunningham .played by five different actress .Amanda has been the most successful actress to play holly . After hollyoakes later that's when Amanda took the roll of holly and has been in hollyoakes seens

2012–

In November 2012, a fourteen-year-old Holly returns during Cindy and Tony's, Doug Carter (PJ Brennan) and Ste Hay (Kieron Richardson)'s double wedding. During the reception a mini bus carrying Ruby Button (Anna Shaffer), Jono Johnson (Dylan Llewellyn), George Smith (Steven Roberts), Sinead O'Connor (Stephanie Davis) and Neil Cooper (Tosin Cole) and driven by Maddie Morrison (Scarlett Bowman) crashes through the wedding venue, after swerving to avoid hitting Ste's daughter Leah Barnes (Ela-May Demircan) on the way to Jono and Ruby's own wedding. Though the accident kills Neil, Maddie, Rhys and Jono, Holly Cindy and Tony are all left uninjured and Holly returns to Switzerland.

A fifteen-year-old Holly returns to the village after learning about Cindy's attack which took place on Christmas Day and visits her in hospital. It is clear that she is far from interested about her mother's recovery and is asked by Tony and Myra to stay at the McQueens, much to her disapproval. When Cindy's condition improves, she and Tony split up as a result to him discovering her past affair with the now-deceased Rhys, and Tony refuses to carry on paying Holly's finishing school fees - much to Holly's fury and frustration, she is forced to attend the local Hollyoaks High School and live in Tony's flat with Cindy and Tony, in the midst of their fractured marriage.

During the ongoing domestic turmoil between Cindy and Tony, Holly feels neglected and isolated and goes clubbing at Chez Chez with Theresa McQueen and Sinead O'Connor. After consuming a lot of alcohol, she is rejected by Chez Chez barman Kevin Foster (Elliot Balchin), and Sinead takes her back home to the O'Connors' flat. Although Holly is vomiting excessively, her and Sinead convince Sinead's step-mother Diane O'Connor (Alexandra Fletcher) not to bring her back to Cindy, else she might be punished, so she stays the night there. The next morning Diane takes a hungover Holly back home. After Cindy has a heated encounter with Diane, Holly later has a bad argument with her mother, and accuses her of being a bad parent. Cindy and Holly later make up and agree to move out of Tony's.

Cindy and Holly move into the flat above the Price Slice convenience store. Cindy is also offered a job at Price Slice, resulting in Frankie Osborne (Helen Pearson) getting sacked. This utterly displeases Frankie since the Osbornes are in a state of economic unrest. Furthermore, when Nancy Osborne (Jessica Fox) discovers two and a half thousand pounds cash in an envelope, she becomes suspicious that her husband Darren is gambling. As she is confronting him at the Dog, Holly intervenes and tells Nancy the cash belongs to Cindy and her, so she gives it to Holly. Darren initially believes that Holly was merely helping him hide that he was gambling, which Holly was aware of. However, when he later asks Holly to return his money, she refuses, threatening to inform Nancy of his gambling if he tries to get it back.

After arguing with Sinead, Holly reports her to social services for drug-dealing, as Sinead has a baby daughter. This causes serious problems for Sinead. Holly later begins a relationship with Callum Kane (Laurie Duncan). Callum and Holly go on a trip to country mansion with Esther Bloom (Jazmine Franks), Esther's girlfriend Tilly Evans (Lucy Dixon) and Tilly's new housemate Jade Hedy (Lucy Gape), to celebrate Esther's eighteenth birthday. While Callum and Holly are messing around with a shotgun outside, Holly nearly shoots a man. Callum and Holly take the man in and apologize, finding out his name is Wes and that he coincidentally already knows Jade. Wes forgives them, but when Wes and Holly are alone, Wes acts violent towards her. Holly tells Callum about this although Callum refuses to believe it, causing them to argue. During a house party on the trip, Wes joins Holly alone in the bedroom and forces her to let him take topless pictures of her or he will report her to the police for nearly shooting him. He is then interrupted by Theresa, who is also at the party, and Wes then leaves. The next day, Wes threatens to shoot Holly with the shotgun. Callum walks in on Wes doing this, and they fight after Wes reveals the topless pictures he has of Holly. The fight causes a head injury for Wes, but Callum and Holly think that he is dead and leave the room. Wes is actually alive however, although Jade then stabs him dead. A crazed and halloucegenic Jade then ties Esther up and reveals that Esther's liver transplant came from her dead boyfriend. Jade, who feels as though Esther is abusing her gift of a new liver by drinking alcohol at the party, and feels that Esther doesn't deserve it, plans to kill her. Callum tries to save Esther, but Jade stabs and kills Callum with a samurai sword before he can, in order to stop him. Jade then ties Holly up, although Tilly eventually kills Jade during a fight and releases both Holly and Ester.

Holly, still trying to cope with Callum's death, gets drunk with Robbie Roscoe (Charlie Wernham), then later kisses his brother Jason Roscoe (Alfie Brown-Sykes) and they start dating. After a rocky start they decide to have sex, but it doesn't turn out well and they try again.

Headteacher Patrick Blake (Jeremy Sheffield) confiscates Holly's phone that Jason's holding when Jason makes a comment about his family. To impress Holly, Jason breaks into Patrick's home and steals Holly's phone back. He messes up Patrick's flat further to make it look like a general robbery. Patrick's fiancé Maxine suddenly enters the flat and Jason, panicked, runs straight past her out the open door. Jason returns the phone to Holly thinking she'll be impressed but she is annoyed at how he did it. When Patrick sees Holly holding her distinctive pink-cased mobile, he assumes that she was the one who broke into his flat and calls both her and Jason into his office, where Jason admits it was him. Patrick gets the police involved and Jason thinks that he won't be in too much trouble as he only took Holly's phone. However, unbeknownst to him, Maxine falsely claimed to hospital staff that the person who broke in to her flat assaulted her as he ran past her out the door and caused her bruises, to cover up the fact that it was really her abusive fiancé Patrick who assaulted her and caused them. Jason is charged with assault.

A released Jason then surprises Holly with a romantic picnic in the empty Deli, but halfway through they smell smoke and are alarmed to see that the Deli is on fire; they are trapped in as the fire is blocking their only exit. Tony and Ste hear their screams and call the fire brigade. Firefighter Leela Lomax (Kirsty-Leigh Porter) rescues them from the fire unharmed.

Holly is blamed by Cindy for leaving the Price Slice freezer door open and letting the stock defrost. Cindy shouts at Holly, but Holly claims that it wasn't her. It is later revealed that unkbeknownst to anyone, Cindy has started sleepwalking and opening the freezer as she does, as she is having trouble coping since she and her friends Mercedes Browning and Lindsey Butterfield (Sophie Austin) murdered Mercedes husband, Lindsey's colleague and the father of Cindy's unborn child, Paul Browning (Joseph Thompson) - the freezer was where the trio originally stored his body before they disposed of it.

Cindy gives birth three months early to Holly's half-brother Hilton Max Cunningham. He is born with Severe Combined Immunodeficiency which means he needs a Bone Marrow Transplant. Holly, along with Cindy, immediately offer to be donors but neither of them are matches.

References

External links

• Character profile on the E4 website