Love Island’s Curtis Pritchard recreates ‘How’s Trish’ and it’s better than the original

Hollyoaks has always been known as the soap that goes to places that Coronation Street, Emmerdale and EastEnders wouldn’t dare.

It’s always been celebrated as the soap that pushes the boundaries, and whether they’ve always stuck the landing or not, they’ve always been fearless in their approach.

Boundaries were certainly pushed when sometimes-dancers, sometimes-reality stars, Curtis and AJ Pritchard, were cast in the show as Marco and Jacob, former workmates and current rivals of Trish Minniver (Denise Welch), back in 2021. They worked in tandem to steal her book of dance contacts.

Of course, you’d be completely forgiven for forgetting everything about their storyline, as the pair are remembered for one scene and one scene only. The revered ‘How’s Trish’ scene, which went viral almost immediately for the frankly hilarious awfulness of Curtis and AJ’s acting.

Curtis, in particular, has proven that he’s more than capable of laughing at himself, as evidenced by his re-enactment of the legendary soap scene during his current tenure on Love Island: All Stars.

Delving back in time, Curtis woodenly asked his fellow Islander, Ciaran: ‘Finally, what time do you call this? What would mum say?’.

Ciaran stuck to the script, responding: ‘Probably ‘Stop whinging;.’

Then it came. The line that everybody was waiting for in all of it’s monotone glory:

‘True, how’s Trish?’

‘Ugh, heartbroken. She thought she was getting engaged. Couldn’t be any further from the truth.’ Ciaran responded.

‘Well…that’s made my day that,’ Curtis added, desperately trying to stifle a guffaw. Ciaran, however, remained dedicated to the part, dropping AJ’s final line: ‘Doesn’t compare to what we’ve got planned for her.’ 

Sharing a laugh upon completion of their re-enactment, the two collapsed into laugher, with Ciaran saying: ‘I am so happy we’ve done that.’

Both AJ and Curtis opened up about their uninentional viral moment during an appearance on the Straight To The Comments! podcast last year.

AJ said: ‘I’ve never been on a soap and I actually did watch Hollyoaks when I was younger. I’ve never understood soap stories changing so quickly. Now I understand it.

‘We went on, we had a whole script that we’d learnt… then they went, ‘Okay, we’re going to change every scene.’ I was like: ‘how can you have a storybook that changes fluidly as you move?’ It was hilarious. I loved it.’

Curtis agreed with the brutal comments that had accrued online.

‘Our acting on that was GCSE grade quality,’ he said. ‘We were ultimately thrown into the deep end, that bad.’

It wasn’t just fans who savaged their casting, though, with a number of actors sharing their feelings about using reality TV stars in the place of trained actors.

Hollyoaks legend Gerard McCarthy who played the ground breaking Kris Fisher said: ”The next time a producer/casting director says the words ‘but they have a big social media following’… Just point them in the direction of this absolute car crash!’

Parry Glasspool, formerly Hollyoaks’ Harry Thompson also wrote an impassioned response to the scene: Parry ‘To be clear, I have no problem with people using reality TV to accelerate a career in which they’ve trained or shown interest in.

‘But it’s agonising to watch. The pain of knowing that anyone else landing a part on a successful soap takes training, previous credits, a load of castings and auditions before you are even considered for a role. 

‘In this day and age, it’s probably easier to jet off to Majorca and go on Love Island than to be in with a chance of securing acting jobs.

‘When young actors look on after countless rejections to see the part they went for has been snatched up by someone who ‘wants to be the kind of guy that makes everyone coffee in the morning’, it’s enough to make you want to give up.’

After the response, Curtis attempted to brush off their complaints: ‘Up to this moment I felt absolutely nothing about it because I hadn’t realised anybody had said anything. We always get that, we always get different things and for me it’s always about positivity.’

AJ added: ‘I’ve learned to go for the positives and not the negatives. If someone’s got constructive criticism, 100 per cent that’s great, but if it’s just negativity then it’s not something I’m going to waste my energy and time on that.’