Hollyoaks Fans Will Recognise This Fantastic Beasts 3 Star

Marking the greatest fictional crossover that we never knew we needed until now, a familiar face from Hollyoaks pops up in the brand-new Harry Potter spin-off film Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. Appearing as a Ministry of Magic staffer, Jacqueline Boatswain plays a small, yet vocal, role in the monumental film. As fans will know all too well, Boatswain portrayed Hollyoaks’ Simone Loveday between 2015 and 2019. But her new role is a different beast altogether.

The Harry Potter-adjacent film series is loosely based on Harry Potter’s magizoology textbook Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, which was also released as an IRL charity guidebook for us Muggles back in 2001. The Wizarding World spin-off story centres around the book’s fictional author Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) as he researches magical creatures. In the second film Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Newt uses his vast magical know-how to help Hogwarts’ headmaster Dumbledore in thwarting dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald – and The Secrets of Dumbledore picks up the struggle where its predecessor left off.

A far cry from her previous roles in both Hollyoaks and iconic kids TV show Grange Hill (where she played the school’s headteacher Mrs Bassinger) Jacqueline Boatswain winds up as a Ministry of Magic employee in the new Fantastic Beasts… and does her best to warn the German Minister for Magic, Anton Vogel, ahead of Grindelwald attempting to get elected as the new Supreme Head of the International Confederation of Wizards.

Most people will recognise Boatswain from Hollyoaks. Originally, she arrived on the soap as part of the Loveday family, who seemed like an unremarkable, ordinary family until it emerges that Simone Loveday and her husband Louis are actually trying to track down their kidnapped daughter Lisa, and further down the line, Louis puts his wife through the wringer when he cheats on her multiple times, including shacking up with her sister.

From here, things only get more complicated, with mistaken identities, accidental stabbings, and car crashes along the way. “She’s a bit of a snob,” said Boatswain of her Hollyoaks character, who also had a first-rate knack for giving motivational speeches around the village. "I don't think it was a totally happy ending, but she's going off into the sunset,” she said of her character’s departure from the soap in 2019. “Simone's not going to be sitting at home, living out her days. She’s going off to do something exciting, I’m sure, and in the sunshine. Simone will make the most of whatever it is she’s going to do."

Strangely enough, though, this isn’t the first time that the Wizarding World has crossed paths with the suburbs of Chester. Four years ago, the film’s leading man, Redmayne, jokingly revealed that he’s hated Hollyoaks since working as a waiter at the British Soap Awards, pre-fame.

“There's this bit where they get everyone really drunk… in order to then be a really lively audience,” he said on BBC’s The One Show. ”There were all these drunk actors and I was in charge of holding the tray where they put all of their empties. And the cast of Hollyoaks started piling extra ones on top and they all fell."

"I've hated Hollyoaks ever since!" he laughed.