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An Interview with Michael Higgs from the Official Bad Girls Web Site from 2001:
I think Jack Ellis (who plays Jim Fenner) was quite pleased to get another man on board!" Michael laughs.
"Primarily my scenes are really with Simone [Lahbib who plays Helen Stewart]. It's turning into quite a big story line for us. Knowing what her story had been to date, it's an interesting part to play. I was thinking about when you seriously like someone a lot and you think it's all hunky-dory and going off fine, but there's a niggling doubt in your head. And then you find out that they're seeing someone else, and then you find out that it's a woman that they're seeing. I was thinking, does it make it worse or does it make it better? In a way it doesn't matter. If it's someone you really like, it's going to be agony if they like someone else more. If a woman left me for another man it would be a real blow in all kinds of ways: to your pride, to your ego and to your heart, if you really loved somebody. But if the other person is a woman, there's not much you can do about that. In a way you're not really in competition. It's never happened to me - so I don't know for sure!
"Thomas likes Helen (Simone Lahbib) because she is feisty and fun, and he can see she's a good person. Helen enjoys the fact that he's honest, intelligent and doesn't have any of the usual baggage she has to put up with - we'll just have to wait and see…
"Thomas is a doctor and I've asked some of my friends who are doctors about their work. But at the end of the day, doctors have a particular set of skills that they have learned and put into practice, like anyone else. Thomas is a good doctor and psychiatrist. He has a very gentle, humane, common-sense way of looking at things: really wanting to understand the other person and not just foisting any kind of medical text book at his patient. That's why Helen is attracted to him, as she's not used to someone like that in the prison system.
"He's a nice guy. It's been good to be playing a character completely different from Santini; he is the antithesis of him. I think Santini would probably have found Waugh a bit boring!
"The first day that I started filming on Bad Girls was on location at Oxford Prison which was where, exactly a year ago to the day, I'd been filming PC Santini's trial for The Bill - at the very same prison. I'd worked with the director Jo Johnson on The Bill, the cameraman on The Bill, one of the make up girls on The Bill, one of the costume girls on The Bill - and the catering team was the same as The Bill and I thought 'God, what's changed?!' Just a different costume and script!"
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