The broad smile is still there, and Jorgie Porter also has the glint in her eye and the infectious optimism that helped win our hearts when she competed in I’m a Celebrity.
But the Hollyoaks favourite, who also found fame as the lads’ mag favourite, calendar pin-up and fashion-loving party girl who came runner-up on Dancing On Ice in 2012, has changed.
Now 35, Jorgie is excelling at her most important role to date – mum to her seven-month-old son, Forest.
It’s a role made all the more poignant by her first pregnancy in 2021, when she tragically lost her unborn quadruplets at 14 weeks.
Bouncing Forest on her knee, Jorgie says: “Being a mother is so hard. The hardest thing I’ve ever done. It’s relentless. But I will always, always be thankful I am a mum, no matter how hard it is, because of what happened. It’s given me the gratitude to take each day as it comes and enjoy my family.”
Even on one of her first nights out since Forest’s birth – at the British Soap Awards on June 3 – Jorgie couldn’t wait to get home to her property developer fiance Ollie Piotrowksi, 32, and Forest.
She says: “My old party days – and nights – are mostly gone. And I couldn’t be happier about it.
“I would never want to be that girl again, the one without a care beyond clothes shopping and having a good time. I loved my younger, frivolous years but that’s not me now.
“When Forest was born, I just felt so excited for this new stage in my life. Although, all the late nights were good training for sleepless nights with a baby.”
Jorgie had Forest in November, having become pregnant just eight months after losing the quadruplets. It had been a “missed miscarriage”, when the babies are no longer alive but the mother experiences no symptoms.
She says: “My miscarriage was the hardest thing I’ve had to go through in my life. None of the doctors knew why it happened. I had four times the hormones, and then afterwards, the feeling of being pregnant never went away.
“Ollie and I had felt so ready to be parents. I just didn’t understand how it could be taken away.
“There is no pain like it, and it was the same for Ollie.
“Some think, ‘It’s the woman’s body’, but that’s not true. If anything, it makes the male partner feel he can’t be upset. So it’s important to talk about it.”
Jorgie is true to her word. She was initially taking time out of her busy working mum schedule to discuss her first TV project since having Forest.
She never intended to discuss her miscarriage, but it doesn’t feel honest for her to discuss her happy home life, without also acknowledging the pain she’s been through.
That’s why she will never apologise for taking every opportunity she can to discuss the brutal realities of suffering a miscarriage.
She says: “I felt very lucky to be able to speak to friends who have suffered miscarriages and got through the other side.
“I don’t think I can ever move away from what happened. It’s about progression. If I talk about Forest it’s important I don’t ignore what happened. If it had not happened, I wouldn’t be mum to Forest.
“When he’s older I’ll definitely tell him about our lost babies.”
For now, her worries are mainly about keeping up with Forest.
She says: “It’s amazing to watch how he has developed. I’m generally quite a patient, tolerant person. And what I’ve found is... I need even more of those qualities.”
Jorgie suffers from Raynaud’s Syndrome, which causes pins and needles, numbness and cold fingers and toes.
One bad flare-up was during her 2015 I’m a Celebrity stint. But it has been bad again recently. She says: “When I touched Forest, my hands would be so cold, he’d do a little shudder. I have to have a second opinion on his bath water as it could be a different temperature to what I think it is.
“On Hollyoaks I always have to have hand warmers even when it is sunny.”
Jorgie returns to the Channel Four soap as Theresa McQueen later this year.
But before that, she has another project close to her heart, hosting the Channel 4 series Second Hand Style-Up, where members of the public get makeovers using only pre-loved items.
The show is being made in association with Vinted, the app for buying and selling secondhand clothes and promoting sustainable fashion. Jorgie says: “Everyone needs to make their cash go further these days. And there’s a massive benefit to the environment too. I’d really love to see the back of fast fashion. It’s staggering how many clothes end up in landfill.”
Fashion is the second most polluting industry, after oil. An estimated 92 million tonnes of textile waste ends up in landfill each year, equal to about 552 billion T-shirts
The other upside of the show has been helping people. Outreach officer Tyler, 42, had transitioned to male, and felt self-conscious Having opted to sell his old wedding dress on the show, he then got a whole new look – to the delight of his wife Chantelle.
Jorgie says: “She was so happy to see him so happy when he got these new ‘old’ clothes. And what a difference it made to his confidence.”
- Jorgie is working with Vinted on their sustainability campaign. Go to http://Vinted.com. Second Hand Style-Up is streaming now on My4
