Ex-Eastenders star Katie Jarvis charged with assault and racially aggravated harassment

Ex-Eastenders star Katie Jarvis has been charged with assault and racially aggravated harassment after an alleged drunken street fight last year. 

The actress, 29, who played Hayley Slater on the soap, will appear at Southend Magistrates Court on April 15. 

Katie was arrested by Essex Police after a fight broke out at Marine Parade at the resort town on Friday July 31 – one of the hottest days last year. 

An Essex Police spokesperson told MailOnline: ‘Katie Jarvis has been summonsed to appear at Southend Magistrates Court on 15 April to face charges of assault by beating, common assault, using threatening or abusive words or behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress, and racially or religiously aggravated harassment, alarm or distress.’ 

MailOnline has contacted Katie’s representatives for comment.  

A clip filmed by a bystander saw a group of women brawling in the drinking area outside the Papillon pub on the seafront, before it spilled out onto the street. 

One video showed five black women scuffling with a white woman.

A second video appeared to show a white woman, said to be Katie, shouting. 

Katie was said to have been spotted by a witness who said they heard someone yell ‘I’m a famous actress!’ as her friends chimed in with: ‘She’s Hayley Slater from EastEnders!’ 

It’s thought that the row began when Katie took a chair from the table the group of women were sitting at. 

Jarvis joined the Eastenders cast in 2018 as the cousin of Kat Slater [Jessie Wallace].

One of her storylines saw her have an affair with Kat’s husband Alfie Moon [Shane Richie] while they lived in Spain with Kat and their children.

Hayley then fell pregnant, giving birth to daughter Cherry.  

Jarvis’s character was last seen on screen in February 2019 when Stacey Fowler, played by Lacey Turner, went to hospital to collect her after treatment for her mental health. 

After her departure from the soap, Katie took up a job as a security guard at bargain store B&M in Romford, East London.   

Dagenham-born Jarvis revealed she ‘crumbled’ and was left in tears after a friend alerted her to headlines about her job as a security.

But upon reflection and thanks to the support of fellow thespians from Tamzin Outwaite to Nathalie Emmanuel, she is ‘proud’ to have changed the conversation.

‘Their support gave me the strength to speak out and stand up for hard-working people – especially single mums’, she said, and insisted her priority in life is caring for her two children, saying: ‘As long as I’m providing for them, nothing else matters. Everything I do is for them.’

She said she is proud to take on any work she can to ‘keep busy and learn new things’.