Shocks and surprises

Writer Leo Richardson and director Toby Frow discuss their involvement in tonight’s explosive hour-long Halloween special - and Gavin’s delivery of that line to a stunned Sharon!

“We talked about it a lot and so I emailed [the writer of the following episode] Rob (Gittins),” explains Leo. “And I was like, ‘Do you mind if we use ‘Hello Princess’? He was like, ‘No it’s fine, you can have it!’ But don’t worry, he’s doing it again. You get it twice!”

“Do you give it away? Do you save it all for the last line?” ponders Director Toby Frow as he talks about directing that last scene. “The audience know what’s coming; they have a sense of what’s coming.”

But that wasn’t the only shock of the night. With Stacey suffering an electrifying fate, things could have gone very differently during filming for Tony.

“Lacey's incredible, she's remarkable, kept whacking her head against the filing cabinet! She was yanked back on a bungee cord or whatever it was.

“But it was all (filmed) in bits really. When they’re cut together they look dramatic. But, actually, scenes like that take hours to shoot and they are all broken in to tiny little sections. And the sound; without the sound it looks really flat. Then they put this dirty great whack on it and you go, ‘Whoa! That hurts!’ Lots of cheating.

The pace and excitement is something both Leo and Toby relish when it comes to working on EastEnders.

“Often you’ll have a writer or the story team pitch ideas, and you’re sitting there listening to the person telling the story and it’s almost as if you’re watching it!,” says Leo. “You go away and wonder if that’s going to make it in to the show. You do a little dance when you find out you got it! Exciting!”

“You know it’s going to be on TV in x amount of months, and that’s lovely. You’re constantly on a high. Because when you’re developing your own work it can take years. On shows like this you know it’s going to happen and that level of excitement gets you through the process.”

“What’s quite nice is when you’re working on a block of episodes and you already vaguely know what’s going to happen next,” admits Toby. “And so I get to pay things off in these episodes in about three months’ time, which is really fun. So in this block there is stuff that’s going to come up in my next block, so I can go, ‘I know how exactly we’re going to do this now so, it has a real impact when I come back to it.’ “

“I love it, there’s no time to indulge,” adds Toby on the pace of directing EastEnders. “You have to get in there and make decisions fast. If something isn’t right you really do get one chance to think of something, and the actors are used to that. They want quick answers; things they can play; changes of direction - and they love it. It’s a real buzz.

“Leo will probably disagree with me, but there’s the word on the page, the character that comes off the page and then there’s what the actor brings - and what ends up on the telly has to be somewhere in the middle. And these are real people. There’s a really great bunch of them. And a lot of them come with fantastic ideas.

“You get certain characters that will give it a bit of their own personality. Danny Dyer will give it a bit of his own charm. And that’s authentic. Give it your everything, your personality,” adds Leo.

We wondered if Leo and Toby were influenced by online and social media chit-chat about their episodes? Do they read tweets?

“I do sometimes,” admits Leo. “I think because now television has changed so much I like to know what people like and what people react to, because I think it helps you to gage the audience. Some people see it as really negative thing and there are sometimes negative comments but I think overall you get a sense of what people like and enjoy and it helps you to deliver that to the audience a bit more. “

“I think you can find whatever you want on Twitter, so basically it’s fun looking!” Toby tells us. “I look with interest, but I don’t necessarily change what I do as a result of what people say on the forums. It’s interesting though. You get such a broad cross-section of views, and you also get some real experience and knowledge.”

If you thought the Halloween special was anything to go by, don’t miss Monday’s episode where it proves to be only the beginning of some very tasty storylines.