'Bridgerton''s Genevieve Chenneour Breaks Her Silence on 'Life-Changing' London Robbery, Recalls 'Battle' of 'Life and Death'
On ITV's This Morning, the 27-year-old actress revealed she was "threatened with being stabbed, so it became a real battle of, in my mind, life and death"
The suspect was later identified as 18-year-old Zacariah Boulares, who is currently facing theft and assault chargesBridgerton actress Genevieve Chenneour is speaking out months after her phone was stolen and her life was threatened in a London coffee shop.
Chenneour was in a Joe & the Juice in London in February when her phone was stolen off the table behind her and she pursued the robber to get it back, according to footage obtained by BBC.
The 27-year-old actress, who played Clara Livingston in season 3 of the hit Netflix series, said that the altercation became a matter of "life and death" in her mind during a June 12 interview on ITV's This Morning.
On the morning show, Chenneour said she was "shocked" when she first saw the surveillance camera footage from inside the cafe of the attack.
"I didn't even remember my reaction and I thought it was way longer than it actually was. That moment before anything happened, I thought it was about 20 seconds, but it was milliseconds," she recalled.
She said that had 'a bit of a sixth sense that something wasn't quite right" in the moments before the suspect — who was identified as 18-year-old Zacariah Boulares and is expected to be sentenced over theft and assault charges at Isleworth Crown Court on June 17, per the BBC — attempted the robbery.
"As a woman you have that kind of intuition, and I could feel people moving around me in a different way, but I only became aware of it once the incident had happened, in hindsight," she said of her quick reaction to the theft.
"But I did feel — they were going back and forth trying to find a target,' she added.
In the surveillance footage, Chenneour reacted quickly to Boulares' theft, spinning around and trying to get the phone back from him while another customer helped her.
She said on This Morning that there was "about five minutes" of an altercation that followed "and it turned into a full-on scrap with two people."
"I was threatened with being stabbed, so it became a real battle of, in my mind, life and death. So I did things, like, I remember kicking him back with my leg to create space in case he had a weapon on him," she recalled. "It was just a life-changing, crazy moment.'
Given the incident happened in February, she said it has lasting consequences for her, as it "made me quite agoraphobic."
"Leaving the house was quite hard," she admitted.
When asked what made her instantly react and fight back after she noticed her phone was taken, the actress said she has "very quick reactions thanks to having three brothers growing up," and also revealed that she's trained in boxing, which helped too.
"I don't know what came over me. I thought that was a normal reaction," she said. "And then I read all the comments and realized, actually, a lot of people would just let them take the phone."
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Still, she said, "I don't know if I would advise anybody else to do it."
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