Casualty
This page is dedicated to Maureen's role as staff Nurse Sandra Nicholl in BBC's top medical drama Casualty.
Maureen played Sandra from 1991 to 1992 and created a bit of scandal in the process.
SANDRA NICHOLL - (Maureen Beattie)
Scottish nurse Sandra Nicholl arrived in Casualty after the tragic suicide of Kelly Liddle in Series 6. A down to earth, intelligent woman, Sandra always seemed to get the grumpiest and most ill mannered patients.
Her husband spent most his time on an oil rig in the
North Sea and she had a young daughter, Laura.
As Series 7 developed Sandra persuaded a reluctant
Julian Chapman to sing a duet with her at the staff karaoke. They were a hit and were soon an item as well. As the romance between Julian and Sandra developed a nasty episode almost cost Sandra
her job.
Sandra gave an injection of penicilin to a patient who was allergic when Dr. Rob Khalefa was called away to do an emergency operation. Although told to give the injection by Rob, it was Sandra who bore the brunt of the criticism when the patient (who
suffered a bad reaction to the injection) came to his senses. Sandra took the blame as Rob got away scott free.
'There was much bitterness between the two for a time and the incident also caused friction between Sandra and Charlie, who Sandra accused of 'watching his own back'. Then Julian resigned as the pressure finally got to him and he begged Sandra to come with him. But Sandra decided to remain with her husband although she really wanted to go with Julian.
As Maureen would probably tell you, Casualty did, to quote the
good lady herself, "open doors" for her and got her acting career off to a flying start.
Still grieving over Julian's departure, Sandra learned from new consultant Mike Barratt that Julian had watched his brother die in front of him.
Sandra left at the end of Series 7 and one hopes that she
eventually changed her mind and went off with Julian afterall.
Casualty Interview
MOST DIFFICULT SCENE TO PLAY
'I usually have a very non-squeamish constitution but the scene where I had to minister to a farmer who's had his legs chopped off by a combine harvester was pretty nasty stuff. Emotionally speaking, the scene where I told a farmer's wife that her baby had died from the shotgun wound her husband had given the child was hard. Children's stories touch us all, don't they?'
ON CASUALTY AUDITION
'I originally trained for the part played by Maria Friedman in S6. They didn't want me for that part, but told me they thought I'd be right for a part coming up later in the series - that part was Sandra!'
BEST MOMENT ON CASUALTY
When I realised that Geraint Morris wanted me to do a second series, which was the main dream of my heart.'
WORST MOMENT ON CASUALTY
'My very last shot on my very last episode. Apart from the emotion of it being goodbye, it was also freezing cold and wet and about 3am!'
ON HER FIRST SCENE
'The first scene I filmed was not the first scene I played in the episode. It was a scene with Derek about the importance of wearing gloves when touching a patient's blood. It was a lesson about AIDS really. Minnie Driver was the patient who was HIV+ and she's a big star now. You could see her potential immediately.
ON HER SCREEN KISS WITH JULIAN :
'And our kiss was agony, we did it about 7.30 in the morning and I felt I looked like the wreck of Hesperus.'
ON LEAVING CASUALTY
'I was brought in to be Nigel le Vaillant's love interest and that was great. It gave me the chance to play a really brilliant part, but after doing 29 episodes, I just thought 'This is not going to get any better'. It wasn't an easy decision to leave, but I was a little bit scared of getting too reliant on that sort of money on a regular basis. Casualty definitely opened doors for me.'
