At a press conference to launch the major Lucy Beale storyline kicking off this Friday, Executive Producer Dominic Treadwell-Collins was joined by key cast members to exclusively unveil his master plan for the next phase of the show - as well as to announce some exciting news about one character in particular.
“There are going to be a lot of twists and turns,” Dominic revealed. “We're going to use the story to find out a lot about every single character on The Square - and we find out a lot more about Lucy after she died.
“It’s all based on truth and reality and grief,” he added. “ When we first talked about the story, we talked about Lucy dying, the body being found on the common and the story being about grief at first… and slowly, slowly getting closer until the focus suddenly comes to The Square. And Ian and the rest of the family realise that the killer is... a monster. When the killer is revealed, we don’t want everyone to go ‘Oh, that was clever, I never would’ve guessed that.’ We want everyone to go ‘Oooh, that makes sense,’ and “Oh my god, that’s upsetting - and very clever.”
“I think we’re doing it differently,” Dominic admitted when asked about EastEnders’ approach to deaths when compared to those in other shows. “ We’re doing it forensically. The minutia. We’re doing grief first; it’s not a silly death. It’s about death in a family. EastEnders is about family. I’m sure the other soaps’ stories are going to be fantastic as well, but. this is about the death of someone’s daughter, someone’s sister, and we always try and make everything about family and about relationships and about her friends. And then slowly it turns into a mystery. It’s not a heightened mystery. It’s very real and we keep checking ourselves all along. We keep stopping ourselves and saying ‘Okay, let’s make sure this is not melodramatic – what’s the truth of this moment?’ Which is very difficult to do, but we’re doing “
Laurie Brett, who plays Jane Beale, exclusively revealed her future plans for EastEnders. “I’m on screen until the funeral, and then I do have a job commitment… but then I will be back in September, once I have finished off Waterloo Road!” Going on to discuss the storyline, she confirmed Dominic’s views about the show’s approach to Lucy’s death. “It’s about a family. The death of a young person anywhere, however it happens, is always a shock.”
Filming of the emotionally-charged scenes following Lucy’s death took their toll on the cast. “We couldn’t read the scripts without crying to begin with,” said Laurie. “We couldn’t do a line run,” added Adam Woodyatt. I don’t even think we rehearsed it.” Ben Hardy, who plays Peter Beale “ did find it quite difficult to start off with. Adam was very helpful; Rebecca Gatward (the director) was very, very helpful as well. It was difficult filming, and we did do it quite a few times until we got there."
Adam also had high praise for other members of the cast, particularly those new to the show. “The people that came in to play the coppers were absolutely fantastic, because they’ve suddenly come in, cold, to a very well-oiled machine - and suddenly you get confronted by people who don’t want to do a line run, don’t want to rehearse… we just want to shoot it! Oh, they were they really were fantastic.”
“It's been fun to plot a storyline like this, but to plot a storyline like this properly on a big scale, to go back to the first family on The Square, Ian Beale and Adam, is just wonderful,” said Dominic. “To have something affecting (Ian) so massively leading up to the anniversary next year, that was that was kind of the thinking as well - and it's paying off, hopefully. It's going to run into next year and the anniversary, but there are going to be some very big curve balls thrown at the audience between now and then. In the run-up towards Christmas time there's going to be a big twist that will make everyone gasp! That’s all I’m going to say.
But Lucy Beale’s death is not the only story viewers can look forward to in the coming months. Dominic revealed that the murder was "a massive story... but it's not our only story. We are not closing for the summer. We have a huge story coming for the Carters, Shirley, Phil and Sharon, massive stuff for Carol and David, for most of the cast. Rudolph Walker as well, Patrick Trueman, is getting a very big story as well.
“Every single family in EastEnders is going to have their chance to shine but over the next few days you're going to see the Beales shine properly."
Be sure to tune in this Friday at 8pm to see the start of the next chapter…
