22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
ITV Karen Pirie fans only just realising where they've seen River Wilde actress before
ITV's Karen Pirie has been a huge hit with viewers, but many are only just realising where they've seen one of the main characters before
Fans of the gripping ITV drama Karen Pirie are quickly realising where they've previously seen the actress who plays River Wilde.
The brand new series of the hit show kicked off at the weekend, three years after it debuted on screens. Based on the Inspector Karen Pirie series of novels by Val McDermid, the programme follows officer Karen Pirie played by Lauren Lyle.
In the new series, Karen has found herself promoted to detective inspector - and it doesn't take her long to get involved in some drama
Soon enough, Karen is assigned to crack another cold case to do with an infamous unsolved case from over 30 years ago, that saw the kidnapping of heiress Catriona Grant (Julia Brown) and her young son.
However, a man's body has now been found with indisputable links to the original kidnapping. As a result, Karen makes it her mission to find out the truth - with her and her team taking on the biggest challenge of their careers to date.
Several cast members from series one have returned for the new show, including actress Emer Kenny, who plays River Wilde, Karen's best pal and a professor of forensic anthropology and archaeology.
As well as Karen Pirie, which she has also written, Emer has appeared in the likes of Pramface and Father Brown. However, it's her role in EastEnders back in 2010 that has got plenty of fans talking.
'Emer Kenny who played Zsa Zsa Carter is in the new ITV show Karen Pirie,' said one person on an EastEnders Facebook fan page. Other people shared their shock: 'I thought it was her!' Another agreed: 'Same here I recognised her from somewhere.'
Emer made her debut on EastEnders in 2010 as Zsa Zsa Carter, the daughter of Tina Carter (Luisa Bradshaw-White). She departed the show that same year after dumping her cheating boyfriend Leon and leaving for France.
Meanwhile talking about the new series of Karen Pirie, Emer recently admitted she felt pressure coming up with the second series.
'I was daunted because it was my first time lead writing a show and it was Lauren's first time as the lead, so there was this kind of mad, magic excitement that we had and we both really gave it everything we had, and I put a lot of my personal feelings about how it felt to be doing that for the first time in the story,' she told Yahoo UK recently.
