Actor and former Loose Women panellist Sherrie Hewson has spoken about the change of climate on the long-running ITV chat show, claiming that it is “very different” to what it used to be.
Hewson, who featured on Loose Women regularly between 2003 and 2016, reflected on the show’s changing sensibilities, speaking weeks after the departures of presenters Denise Welch and Nadia Sawalha.
Welch quit the series in August after 25 years with Loose Women. Sawalha claimed last month she had been “bullied” into leaving the show, alleging that ITV had temporarily axed her in July amid an “escalating campaign of smears, complaints, hostile media coverage and targeted calls to have me removed”.
Both departures follow budget cuts at ITV that resulted in the length of each episode being cut from one hour to 30 minutes, and the studio audience being axed.
open image in gallerySpeaking to The Mirror, Hewson claimed that Loose Women is “a different show to what it once was”.
“Loose Women in my day was extraordinary, because we didn’t have the problems we have now where you can’t say that,” she said. “We didn’t have any of that, we just said what we thought.
“We had the most I had unbelievable rows with Janet Street-Porter, but they were real rows. We were still friends afterwards and went out to dinner. You don’t see that anymore, but because we had the freedom to do it, it was a very different day.”
In its current iteration, Hewson claimed that presenters have “to be very careful, like everything on television now. You’ve got to be very careful what you say, how you say it. We just said what we thought, and somehow we got away with it!”
Sawalha’s departure from the series has proved a controversial topic; the TV star has threatened legal action against ITV, alleging that the broadcaster was “forever changing the goalposts” when it came to her return from her absence in July.
She also pointed to her support of Palestine as being a factor in the “campaign” against her.
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In a video shared on Instagram, Sawalha said: “I want to say how sad I am that it’s got to this. Believe me, I have appealed to ITV’s hearts and minds, but to no avail.
“After I began speaking publicly in support of Palestine in December 2023, I became the target of an escalating campaign of smears, complaints, hostile media coverage and targeted calls to have me removed from Loose Women.”
According to Sawalha, the broadcaster “couldn’t guarantee they wouldn’t take me off again, as it would depend on what was said, even though I’m hired for being an opinionated woman on a discussion show and I’ve never brought up or spoken about Palestine directly on the show”.
open image in galleryITV did not respond to a request for comment at the time.
Another Loose Women panellist, Dame Kelly Holmes, responded to Sawalha’s post, writing: “This is just not right or just.
“I am so sorry, Nadia, no one can even begin to comprehend the ‘fight’ you must have been having behind the scenes. Thanks for sharing this. I had no idea. With you.”
Last week, Loose Women panellist Charlene White said that it had “been really difficult” to see her colleagues get “made redundant” amid the cuts at ITV, but that she finds it “wonderful” to make the show work in the midst of challenges.
“It doesn’t matter what you throw at Loose Women, we will make it work,” she said. “We get to still be with each other, we get to still share stories, we get to make people laugh at lunchtime, we can have a few tears, but when we have those tears, we still have each other for support, and I think that’s important, and I think that’s an important thing for people to see. We don’t agree all the time, but we do have each other’s backs all the time.”
Ex-Loose Women star Carol McGiffin also commented on the show’s continuing prospects, claiming recently that the ITV stalwart should be brought to an end as it “seems to be in its final throes”.
“Watching now it’s a sad shadow of its former self, boring, strained, unfriendly and with too many rich, whinging women going on about the menopause or their terrible lives,” she continued. “Time to let it go.”