Danny Dyer has hit out at the cast and creators of EastEnders for being “cliquey”, admitting that he was “off his nut” for much of the show, which he added has “sh*t” storylines.
His confession comes at an awkward time, as he is likely to bump into his former colleagues at the Bafta TV awards tonight (11 May), where he won the prize for Best Male Comedy performance, for his role in Sky’s Mr Bigstuff.
The 47-year-old actor starred as Mick Carter, the son of Shirley Carter (Linda Henry), on the long-running BBC soap between the years 2013 and 2022. His character – who died by an apparent drowning at sea– quickly became a fan-favourite, finding himself at the centre of some of the programme’s biggest storylines and running the fictional Albert Square pub, the Queen Vic.
But the experience was fraught with difficulties as he candidly told a charity event held at the Wimbledon Club on Saturday night (10 May).
“When I first came in it was a very cliquey place to work,” he said, according to reports by The Sun. “We took the pub (Queen Vic) over from Shane (Richie) and Jessie (Wallace).” The actors played famous characters Kat Slater and Alfie Moon.
Dyer explained that he and and his onscreen wife Linda Carter (played by Kellie Bright) both felt a frosty reception from Wallace and Richie.
“Kat and Alfie had an 11-year run and then they wanted to get rid of them so they brought us in and they had the hump. They were getting prickly about us coming in. I was like, ‘What is the matter with these people? I have not made this call.’”
He continued: “There were a lot of people blanking us when we first turned up and me and Kellie thought ’You know what, f*** these c****. Let’s get together and show them something different.’ We had to prove ourselves over six months. It was hard work. Then a new producer came in and sacked a load of people.”
The actor went on to mock the show’s storylines as he hit out at relationships and deaths that he felt were far-fetched.
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“You’ve got to sell this s***, and a lot of it is s**t. You’re like, ‘What the f*** is this?’. Mick with Janine (Butcher played by Rebecca Michael) was mental.”
He added that the decision to kill of Lola Peace (Danielle Harold) with a brain tumour last year was a mistake: “I felt for her. They came up with a storyline saying you’re going to die of brain cancer. She’s so incredible as an actress. She was wasted. OK, it’s a brilliant story and you leave, but it’s EastEnders – anyone can come back.”
However, the onslaught against his former employers took an even darker turne as he accused the BBC of not exercising the appropriate “duty of care”.
“I was off my nut for a lot of that job. I was squinting a lot for a couple of years, a lot of Valium and Diazepam,” he said.
“You have 30 pages a day you’ve got to learn. There’s no f***ing about. You organically make the scene work, you rehearse nothing. It f***s your nut up. I ended up in rehab twice. Not so much in Corrie, but in EastEnders it’s so dark.”
He said the show was inflexible with family commitments, despite the pay being good. Dyer is reported to have earned £250,000 a year on the show.
“You earn good money, but you ain’t got time to go to a cashpoint. You have no life. The amount of birthdays I missed. If someone dies in your family they won’t even let you go to the funeral. It’s such a machine.
“There’s not much duty of care. That’s the truth. I’d love to see A-list actors come in and do it, they’d crumble. You’ve got to be on it.
“In films, you make yourself properly cry, you go to a dark place and you have time to recover. It messes a lot of people’s heads up. Most people are off their nut.”
An EastEnders spokeswoman told The Sun: “We would never discuss an individual’s private matters, however, we do not recognise these claims.
“EastEnders has extremely robust and well-established procedures in place to safeguard the welfare of everyone who works on the show.”
The Independent has contacted representatives for Richie, Wallace, and the BBC.
