Anna Samson is the newest star to join the Death in Paradise world and its spin-offs. 

She will be heading out to the sandy beaches of Dolphin Cove to begin solving a series of murder mysteries on Friday. 

Return to Paradise is the latest instalment of the Death in Paradise series and will see Anna, a newcomer to prime time TV outside Australia, transform in to DI Mackenzie Clarke.

The red-haired actress will be playing the serious detective who has left a jilted fiancé back in London (while her new boss happens to be his mother) and is ready to tackle the seemingly never ending crime wave sweeping the glorious idyll of the Paradise universe. 

But Anna’s career on TV was never set in stone and the actress revealed to You Magazine that growing up her family didn’t even own a TV set. 

Instead her father ‘made one from a cardboard box’, with magazine covers on a reel. 

The British-Australian actress was born in Haywards Heath, West SusSєx but her family relocated to Maiduguri, northeastern Nigeria, when she was two years old.

Anna Samson, 34, is the newest star to join the Death in Paradise world and its spin-offs and will be heading out to the sandy beaches of Dolphin Cove on Friday

But Anna’s career on TV was never set in stone and the actress revealed that growing up her family didn’t even own a TV set 

The red-haired beauty will be playing DI Mackenzie Clarke who has left a jilted fiancé back in London and is ready to tackle the unseeingly never ending crime wave sweeping Australia

The star’s father, an engineer who taught himself jazz piano, quit his job at Thames Water to build a dam to deliver fresh water to more parts of West Africa while her mother, a nurse volunteered at her school. 

At school, Anna was ‘the only white kid’ and she said her experience in West Africa is a vital part of who she is: ‘To have a concept of the scale of our world and how differently humans live in it while essentially being the same – at such a young age, it’s a real gift.’

A few years later, when they returned to the UK, Anna would visit her grandparents on their council estate in Hackney, and be taken by them to West End shows like Oliver!, ‘and I thought, “That’s magic, I want to be in that”‘.

But she didn’t stay in the UK for long and soon relocated to Australia for her father’s work in the star’s early teens but she added that being back in England makes her feel she’s come home.

Inspired by the musicals her grandparents took her to, the star left home at 17 and enrolled in the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne where she worked in theatre, gaining film and TV roles.

In 2021, she got her big break in Home and Away and reflected that her time on the soap was a rite of pᴀssage not just for herself but for all Australian actors. 

Although she is set to star in a British TV show, Anna lives in an art deco flat in Sydney and is currently studying for an MA in literature at university in Sydney and hopes to even tackle a PhD in the future. 

And while she seems to have her life on track, it hasn’t been without its ups and downs. 

The star’s father, an engineer who taught himself jazz piano, quit his job at Thames Water to build a dam to deliver fresh water to more parts of West Africa while her mother, a nurse volunteered at her school (Anna pictured with her parents in 2021)

The star left home at 17 and enrolled in the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne where she worked in theatre, gaining film and TV roles including in Home and Away (pictured)

But she has struggled in her career and in 2021, the actress was forced to hit back at trolls after their relentless bullying and begged them to ‘find something better to do with their time’

Anna, who had recently joined Home and Away at the time, said that while she was thrilled that she’d been cast in the ‘iconic piece of Australian television,’ she was disappointed to share that her moment has been ‘spoilt with the culture of online bullying’

In 2021, the actress was forced to hit back at trolls after their relentless bullying and begged them to ‘find something better to do with their time’.

Anna, who had recently joined Home and Away, said that while she was thrilled that she’d been cast in the ‘iconic piece of Australian television,’ she was disappointed to share that her moment has been ‘spoilt with the culture of online bullying’. 

Anna, who played Mia Anderson in the TV series, explained that her physical appearance had been attacked.

‘People still feel they have the right to shame, comment on and harᴀss women about their appearance,’ she wrote on Instagram. 

She continued: ‘This is not new. It’s part of a culture of cowardice. Cruelly commenting on our weight loss or gain, our faces, our choices, our voices.

‘I’d suggest to these social media bullies to find something better to do with their time. You are guilty of contribution to a very problematic and dangerous culture.’