it didn’t have to end this way for Mick (Picture: BBC)
With viewers still reeling from seeing Danny Dyer’s last ever episode, which saw Mick Carter’s tragically disappear, the man himself has told us that it didn’t have to end this way for his character.
The 44-year-old told us about his reaction to the storyline and discussed his decision to bow out of the show, branding the experience an ’emotional’ one.
‘It’s very emotional for me,’ he said. ‘I’m very attached to the show and it’s been a third of my career.
‘Thirty years I’ve been knocking about in this industry and nearly ten I’ve been in this show. To make the decision I made, I didn’t make it lightly. It’s a huge job to walk away from.’
To mark the departure of a character who’s had such a central place in the life of Albert Square for so long meant the episode had to be special, and the show’s boss Chris Clenshaw revealed that Danny had agreed to stay on until Mick’s storyline could conclude in a special Christmas Day episode.
‘I wanted it to be a fitting end, so hopefully it is,’ Danny said, before revealing, ‘There was an alternative ending, to be fair, but we’ve not gone with that.’
This obviously has us speculating furiously about all the different ways this story could have played out, but no matter what happened the core of it was always going to be the enduring love that Mick and Linda (Kellie Bright) had for each other.
Mick has been a mainstay of EastEnders for almost a decade (Picture: BBC / Jack Barnes / Kieron McCarron)
‘What I will say about that ep is it’s definitely about love and relationships,’ Danny mused. ‘You’ve got the whole Lola (Danielle Harold) thing going on with little Jay (Jamie Borthwick), the Alfie (Shane Richie), Kat (Jessie Wallace) and Phil (Steve McFadden) thing going on. It’s about relationships, actually, that’s what it’s been focused on.’
His co-star Kellie Bright agreed, and said that for her the main thing was that Mick and Linda were reconciled at last – however briefly.
‘The scene I was holding out for is the scene between Mick and Linda,’ she said. ‘If I could have made that ten times longer I probably would have done, but it had to fit within the episode. It was a beautiful moment.’
As Danny looks forward to the next phase in his career, he’ll take an enduring memory of his final episode with him – the stench of broccoli. For the dramatic water-based sequences in the final episode they used a water tank, he revealed.
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‘We had the water tank stuff, which they filled with broccoli juice to make it green. It’s a bath temperature, it’s quite nice but then the broccoli… In my last scene I was very tearful but then I smelled of broccoli so it softened the blow.’
Despite the broccoli, Danny was very pleased with how the episode turned out. ‘I wanted it to be a bit more cinematic and just take EastEnders to another level,’ he said.
And his now former boss Chris Clenshaw put it perfectly by saying, ‘Mick Carter’s not the kind of character who goes out in the back of a black cab, is he?’
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MORE : What happened with Linda Carter and Keanu Taylor in EastEnders?
It didn’t have to end this way.
