UPDATE: |EastEnders star Natalie Cassidy reveals moment she put ‘two and two together’ after exit News

Fans are getting used to EastEnders without Sonia Fowler in it

EastEnders star Natalie Cassidy has revealed the moment that she put ‘two and two together’ after her exit from the show.

On Friday night (April 18), viewers of the BBC soap said goodbye to Natalie’s character Sonia Fowler, who was first introduced in 1993 when she was just 10-years-old.

Sonia’s farewell saw her decide to finally put herself first, after learning that her dad Terry Cant was not the man she hoped he’d be.

Playing her trumpet for the final time, Sonia left Walford for Bali with daughters Bex and Julia, and her sister Bianca Jackson.

Appearing on the latest episode of her podcast Life with Nat, Natalie shared that Sonia’s daughter shares the same name as one of her close friends.

“I had tea and a very long chat and breakfast with lovely Julia my friend, the other morning we were there for three hours,” she said.

Recalling the ‘lovely sunny morning’ spent enjoying ‘lovely sunny morning, coffees, breakfast, other coffees and soft drinks’, Natalie was stunned to see that her fans had been messaging Julia.

She told listeners: “I just didn’t even think – she said ‘I had all these messages saying ahh the baby’s after you’.

“And I thought ‘Oh yeah’ Sonia had a baby called Julia and I never put the two and two together.”

With Natalie revealing that her friend ‘doesn’t watch EastEnders’, the character Julia’s name was picked by fans for the 40th anniversary.

In one of two historic votes, with the other choosing who Denise Fox should be with, fans had to decide if Sonia’s baby would be named after EastEnders’ original creators Julia Smith or Tony Holland.

Julia served as a producer while Tony was a script editor after meeting in 1971 and started working together on projects including the hospital drama Angels.

Tasked with making a soap set in London for the BBC in 1983, the duo created the beloved programme that continues to impress viewers to this day after its 1985 debut.

Meanwhile, Natalie said in the podcast that she will ‘never say goodbye’ to the soap as she said that finishing filming was ‘really good’.