Record producer, Justin Mildwater, played Annie Palmer In EastEnders.
Justin took his life on Christmas day in 1997 at the age of just 31, and had split from Nadia Sawalha a few months earlier after five years of marriage.
In 2019, when the panelists were speaking on their lives before joining the panel, 54-year-old Nadia was asked about her first husband Justin Mildwater, Nadia was forced to stop mid sentence as she became visibly emotional.
Nadia confessed: “I had a real tragedy while I was there [on EastEnders], my first husband died and it was a truly, truly awful time for everybody. I had to carry on working, I was in the middle of a very big storyline.
“That was really hard because when somebody dies, so many people have an idea of how you should behave and how you should be. I remember just saying, ‘Can someone give me the book on what I’m supposed to be doing?’”
Nadia met Justin through actor Dexter Fletcher, her sister Julia’s ex-lover. “As soon as I saw him I thought, ‘Yes please’,” she said in one interview. “He was so beautiful.”
They married in a Bedouin style ceremony in the Jordanian village of Madaba.