Dani Harmer is all grown up from her Tracy Beaker days and is a mum to two children, and her older daughter had a wild reaction when watching the BBC show for the first time
Tracy Beaker actress Dani Harmer on daughter’s reaction to show
BBC’s Tracy Beaker star Dani Harmer revealed that her daughter has watched the iconic series – and wasn’t impressed at all.
Dani, 36, rose to fame as cheeky child Tracy on the BBC series in the noughties, and now has two children of her own. The Strictly Come Dancing star shares daughter Avarie-Belle, eight, and son Rowan Leon James, three, with partner Simon Brough.
Speaking to Fubar Radio, Dani explained that her daughter was now old enough to be watching the Tracy Beaker spinoffs, but had nothing good to say about the original her mum starred in.
“Yeah, so my daughter is eight now so she’s very much getting into CBBC, we’ve kind of upgraded now from CBeebies to CBBC – she’s very cool. Ahead of her years, is Avarie-Belle,” Dani shared.
The actress added: “And she loves all the Jacqueline Wilson books. She’s read Tracy Beaker, actually… She’s watched quite a lot of The Dumping Ground, and I tried to show her a bit of Tracy Beaker but she was like, ‘Mum, this is really boring.’ I was like, ‘How dare you!’ Hopefully she’ll sit down and watch the OG series one day.
“But she’s very much into The Dumping Ground, I think it’s because it’s kind of newer, fresher, the kids are younger, you know.”
Dani then confirmed that, unlike her daughter, she still hasn’t read the 1991 book that started the Tracy Beaker world. “I’ve still never read it. And I’m going to go down with this ship. And quite frankly, I shall never read it. I’ve got this far in life,” she said.
“And do you know what? I think kind of in a weird way I think it helped me get the part, because I had no idea of this character apart from the character that I made her.
“I think had I read the book, that probably would have been Jacqueline’s version of Tracy… with the BBC’s version of Tracy and the script it was quite far removed from the books.”
While Avarie-Belle isn’t interested in watching her mum’s most iconic series, she’ll still have seen her mum on screen in the new season of The Dumping Ground. Dani returned to make a cameo in the first episode this January, after returning to play Tracy on and off for years.
Dani still looks back on her Tracy Beaker days fondly, but has shared that behind the scenes things weren’t as shiny as they looked. Speaking on the PLT: Behind Closed Doors podcast back in 2021, Dani revealed that she’s had a lifelong struggle with depression, which started while she was a child star.
“I’ve suffered with depression on and off since I was about 14,” she shared, adding that she wasn’t sure how trolling and social media would have impacted her at a young age.
“I just really thank goodness that it wasn’t around when I was younger because I really don’t know how I would have coped,” Dani admitted.
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