Emilia Fox says she is resisting the urge to get married again - but she gets asked constantly.
The Silent Witness star has been with her current partner, TV producer Jonathan Stadlen, since 2021. She said: “Jonathan asks me to marry him every single day but we’re not officially married. Just saying we love each other each day has been enough for us in this moment. It has felt very romantic because there’s a choice every day to go, ‘Yes, I really want to marry you today.’
"He asks me in all different places and at different times. Sometimes when we wake up, sometimes it’s at lunchtime, sometimes on bended knee.” Despite resisting his overtures, she tells Woman&Home how last Christmas they “bought very ordinary rings to both wear as a sign of love for each other.”
She added: “Then people were saying, ‘I hear you’re married! We weren’t invited to the wedding!’ I’m a great believer in marriage and a diehard romantic but I don’t know whether we need to have a ceremonial marriage or what that looks like for our family. The children are the greatest consideration.
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David Venni)Emilia shares 14-year-old daughter, Rose, with former partner, Jeremy Gilley. Prior to that she was married to Jared Harris for five years. Talking about her current partner, she says: “[Finding love with Jonathan] is amazing but we work hard at it. When you reach a certain age and have experiences – I’ve been living my own way with Rose for a long time – you have to keep working on communication and working out what we’re bringing to this relationship in our histories. The good things but also the bad things and how to work that out together.
“It’s very exposing being in love, in a relationship and seeing whether each other can accept the whole of you. Rose and I have been in a cocoon of togetherness, which is opening up. Rose has her dad to be her dad but Jonathan’s amazing with her – kind, loving and thoughtful.” Silent Witness focuses on a team of forensic pathologists and stars Emilia as Dr Nikki Alexander and David Caves as Jack Hodgson.
It previously starred Amanda Burton who played pathologist Sam Ryan. Emilia says: “I was so worried about having to fill Amanda’s shoes because I don’t think you can. When they kindly first offered me the Silent Witness job, I said, ‘I don’t think I can be a copy of Amanda,’ and [the writers] said, ‘Don’t worry, we’re going to write a different kind of character.’ It was then the three of us, three pathologists.”
She added: “We were left an incredible legacy by Amanda, then when she came back [for the landmark 25th series], it was a massive celebration to work with her. She’s just amazing. She literally stepped into the shoes of Sam Ryan again. It was great for us and great for the characters. The show has had different evolutions with different regular casts and we’ve been lucky enough to always get on.
The new series of Silent Witness starts 6 and 7 January, 9pm, BBC1.
Woman&Home is out now
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