Nina Harris - Reception

Reception

Actress Titus-Adams accused the BBC of treating her like a "token black" while she appeared in EastEnders. She claimed that she gave up the opportunity of a "wonderful life" by moving from the USA to the UK to accept the part of Nina - a decision she regretted in hindsight.

Titua-Adams claimed that, before she accepted the part, she had been given the impression Nina would be a strong individual, but ultimately, she was unhappy with the direction the writers took the character. In a newspaper interview in 2000, she recalled: "I was e-mailed a biography of Nina and I stayed up all night reading about this amazingly strong character. I'd been told Nina was gritty with a great background". However Titus-Adams was disappointed when Nina "turned into a barmaid who was an ex-prostitute who just stood there and polished glasses all day." The actress believed that Nina was stereotyped and that she as well as other black actors on the cast of EastEnders at the time, were victims of tokenism. She stated, " always have a shady past. So, surprise, surprise, became a prostitute. All black actors seem to be token blacks. And I ended up feeling like that - an outsider If you look at the background of someone like Sylvester Williams, who plays Mick McFarlane, it's amazing. He's done great theatre. He's been on the show for four years and they have wasted him. Has he ever been at the forefront of anything? He's very under-used. Black actors just get piddly little scenes. They are surplus to requirements."

Titus-Adams felt that the reason her character was written-out was because Ross Kemp who played Nina's love interest Grant Mitchell had decided to quit the soap opera. She commented, "There was nowhere left for me to go after he went. I was so excited when I learned that Nina was to be involved with Grant because he was the show's biggest character but in the event it was the beginning of the end. After the affair with there was nothing for ."

It was initially reported that Titus-Adams had quit the show, but she revealed to the press in 2000 that she had actually been axed by executive producer John Yorke.

Titus-Adams claimed that she got lots of fan mail from young Black, mixed-race and Asian women, who saw her as a role model. However, she added that she was disappointed with her exit from the show saying, "it would have been great if could have stayed and developed relationship with Mick, and who knows, might have formed a Black family."