IF there's one thing Holby City new girl Rakie Ayola isn't afraid of, it's getting her hands dirty in the name of acting.

Since joining the cast of the hospital drama as new, no-nonsense nurse Kyla Tyson, the 37-year-old actress has already been faced with both fake blood and fake vomit during filming.

"I've had to do some suturing on a prosthetic leg wound," she says proudly. Suturing? "Er, yeah, stitching to you and me," she laughs. "And I've held a little cardboard tray while someone vomited into it. That was very nice, watching this vegetable soup come hurtling out.

"The blood I'm fine with, though, because I'm not squeamish. I have learned that you can't dab a fake wound with cotton wool because it just sticks to the fake blood. I always used to wonder why people always dabbed around the wound on TV and now I know why." Rakie's trials on the wards of Holby City ( BBC1, tonight, 8pm) aren't the only gruesome experiences she's had throughout her varied acting career. After years of performances in stage plays, films and numerous TV dramas, Rakie thought her luck was in when she landed a part in a hugely expensive Hollywood film - Sahara, with Matthew McConaughey and Penelope Cruz.

Expensive

"I wouldn't say it was a fun job, that's the wrong phrase," she says. "It was a lovely job because it was a very expensive film and for the bit that I did they took over this luxurious golfing complex in Morocco, where we all stayed.

"The flipside of that was that my character lived in a hut, and we were filming in a real one with mud walls and a corrugated roof. So I'm standing in there with Penelope Cruz, and this hut is full of more flies than I have ever been close to in my life.

"Whether it was because the walls were made of dung, or because there was some kind of meat store nearby, I don't know, but it was so small, and if you were brave enough to open a cupboard door there was a hole in the ground which was obviously the toilet.

"I thought, oh God, somebody lives here. I was about five months pregnant as well, and I was counting my lucky stars that I was just play acting and that I was going to leave the hut and go back to the golf complex to my kingsize bed."

The arrival of her first child - daughter Tansy, who is now 18 months old - got the actress looking for a job that was a bit more long term. Rakie, along with her husband, Adam Smethurst, also an actor, decided that they needed a bit of stability in their lives.

"I've been someone who's loved the uncertainty of acting," she says. "I've loved that one month it's Sahara in Morocco and the next I'm doing a stage play, then it's a six-part telly thing.

"But, last summer, I started thinking it would be really nice not to have to look for a job every couple of weeks. It would be nice just to stay put for a while. If I'm going to be a working mum I'd rather just be one rather than be one intermittently. And then Holby came along, so I'm very grateful."

Balance

WHILE working on Holby City has allowed Rakie to bring a bit of balance to her family's life, she has still needed to enlist a bit of help while her husband Adam is working, too.

"We have a fantastic au pair," she says. "I couldn't do it on my own. We realised we wouldn't be able to manage with just the two of us without pulling in far too many favours from family and friends. They would just stop answering our calls," she laughs.

Rakie's family history is more than worthy of a character in one of the many dramas she's played out on screen and stage. Her mother, from Sierra Leone, was the second wife of a wealthy Nigerian. The first wife didn't like her being around, so she travelled a lot.

Just three weeks after giving birth to Rakie, she left her in the care of her cousin in Cardiff and his wife. They brought her up as their own and, although Rakie has met her real mother a few times over the years, she considers them her parents.

It's her adoptive mum whom she credits with helping her into acting. "She was the one who would take me to drama classes on a Saturday morning," Rakie recalls.

"She was completely behind me, she had no problem about me doing it at all. She died when I was 14 so she never saw me act professionally, but I hope she'd be pleased with what I've done."

Tweet