EastEnders star with very famous sibling now has totally normal job after BBC axe
Joe Swash's sister Shana Swash, who played Demi Miller in EastEnders, has opened up about her life away from the spotlight, including her normal job and her new role as a mum
Joe Swash’s sister Shana now has a completely normal job after quitting BBC soap EastEnders.
Shana Swash, who hit our screens at just 13 in BBC’s EastEnders as Demi Miller with big bro Joe Swash playing her on-screen brother Mickey, has swapped the drama of Albert Square for the aroma of coffee beans. A far cry from Walford, she now runs a pop-up coffee company named Swash and Jones.
Shana started the business with her fiancé Nick Jones amid the Covid-19 pandemic, when filming ground to a halt. Post-lockdown, Shana landed a role in Love Without Walls – but continued to keep her coffee venture percolating on the side.
She confessed to The Express: “I work for myself, so I can come and go as I please, and that’s the glory of it. So if something does come up, I can shut up or get somebody in, and I can go and do some work. My social life has gone from zero to 100 all of a sudden, it’s so lovely to be able to have the time to go and spend with friends and family.”
Shana says her new business was “a real change-up”, but says she was “thankful” to the pandemic for allowing her to try something new. She now runs a trailer, selling coffee and sandwiches at the park she grew up close to.As well as juggling her career, Shana became a first-time mum last December, welcoming a daughter named Kitty Frances Swash Jones with her fiancé. Thankfully her real life pregnancy journey was a lot different to her character Demi’s, who gave birth aged just 13 in Albert Square.
She appeared in the soap from 2004 until 2006, with her character fleeing the area with her baby daddy Leo – but sadly he later succumbed to a heroin overdose, reuniting Demi with her family.
She’s previously teased a return to Soapland, telling The Sun: “Never say never but I’d need a really big bang storyline and for Demi to come back with a personality transplant and be a bit more horrible.”
She even had qualms about taking the job aged 13, explaining: “I had to be really grown up, sit down with my mum and work out if I could portray it and if it was something I wanted to do. I realised it was.
Shana’s axe from the soap was “difficult to accept as a kid”, and viewers even set up a petition to keep her on the show – but sadly it was unsuccessful.
