It's Halloween in Albert Square this week, with shocks galore and events set to take a very spooky turn for certain residents.
“Halloween [on EastEnders] has become, I think in recent years, an episode which is slightly larger than life,” reveals Toby Frow, who directed the hour-long special. “Which is amazing, because it’s such a naturalistic show in all sorts of ways, which I love. It does, however, give you license to play; to do something which is more visually interesting. “
“I love horror movies,” adds writer Leo Richardson, whose script initially went to town on some classic horror homages. “The first draft was probably way too over the top - they emailed me saying, ‘Leo, you have to pull this back a little bit!” because there was Friday 13th, Halloween, Scream, A Nightmare on Elm Street…
“Most of those are still sort of in there though. I pulled it back a little bit, but I thought ‘You know , it’s Halloween and you’ve to have a bit of fun, have a little bit of homage to things like popcorn in the microwave.’ We wanted to have Kathy start it as the star of Scream; basically in her own horror movie.”
Another classic horror film being watched on the TVs of Walford throughout the episode becomes very much part of the scary experience.
“Night of The Living Dead” a delighted Toby tells us. “I can’t believe we got permission to use that. It was sort of our soundtrack for so many of our set pieces.”
“It’s so good,” Leo adds. “That was Toby’s idea. He said I want to use this and I was like ‘That’s incredible. We got the rights!’”
Don’t miss this edge-of-the-seat shocker from 7.30pm this Friday. We’ll also have lots more from Toby and Leo in an extended interview which will go live after the episode.
