How paedo teacher role helped Brooke Vincent move on from painful split – as she opens up on struggles as single mum

Brooke Vincent’s split from her fiance left everyone shocked, now the soap queen has opened up for the first time about life as a single mum.

The ex Coronation Street actress, 34, and former Sheffield United footballer, Kean Bryan, 29, quietly called off their engagement earlier this year and now she has thrown herself into a gritty storyline on Hollyoaks.

She’s recruited her family and friends to help with childcare for her two young kids Mexx, six, and Monroe, five.

Brooke is surrounded by a strong gang of mums at the Channel 4 soap who are all supportive of each other, including Jennifer Metcalfe, Jorgie Porter, Nadine Mulkerrin, Stephanie Waring and Rebeca Ryan.

Speaking at the Inside Soap Awards, where she showed off her stunning figure in a leggy zebra print mini dress she said: “When you work with girls, and women, they understand that you’ve gone through six hundred things before you’ve even got to work that morning.

“It’s not even just people that you see, the make-up girls, anyone that is a woman, and a working mum, understands the hoops that you jump through just to get to work in the morning.

“I think that sometimes it’s really nice to know that some people are in the same boat, and their kids have been playing up, or whatever it may be and what we’re discussing.”

On the juggle with a full-time soap role, and having two young boys: “I have a really good family, and a village, and it does take a village. The boys love going to my mum’s for their tea and they have their cousins, and they’re having fun and it’s fab.”

At time of the split becoming public earlier this month a source said “Brooke and Kean have decided to split but are co-parenting their sons.

“It wasn’t an easy decision for them to make and they are both trying to navigate this new path together.”

Brooke has thrown herself into work, as well as spending time with her friends, and Kean is doing the same.”

Now Brooke has revealed how she’s really coping following splitting from her fiancé, Kean, after 10 years together as she tackles her most shocking role to date – a paedophile lesbian on Hollyoaks.

Corrie fans watched her grow up on-screen as little Sophie Webster.

But earlier this year Brooke Vincent joined teen soap Hollyoaks in a hard-hitting grooming storyline as twisted predator teacher Abigail Matthews.

Brooke, 34, was involved in the first ever lesbian kiss on the famous cobbles back in 2010 with co-star Sasha Parkinson, but now she is playing a manipulative paedo lesbian who has been targeting 14-year-old Dee Dee Hutchinson.

Luckily, Brooke has not received any hate online because people know her, and instead, she has been praised for raising awareness.

On her role she said: “I’ve had so many people telling me ‘this is not Sophie Webster!’

“Do you know what, sometimes when people play characters like this, they do get a lot of criticism, a lot of people hate the character, they get a lot of hate own social media.

“One lucky thing for me, I’ve got very much a personal presence on social media. Everyone knows I’ve got the children, that I’m normal, so a lot of people have reached out and said things like ‘this is such a good character to get your teeth into’ and it is.

“And I think for me to go to a different soap to do a same-ish character would have been kind of been a bit pointless.

“When Hollyoaks approached me about the storyline I just felt like it was something that was really interesting and really important to tell.

“A lot of people don’t always pick up on the signs or the red flags so I think it’s really important, with the age that the fans of Hollyoaks are, it’s a really important story to tell.”

Brooke is very honest on her social media about the struggles of motherhood.

She said: “It’s hard, it is. And I think social media is really good for showing that, especially with motherhood, you wake up and you think you should have it all figured out, but that’s definitely not the case.”