Michelle Collins has leapt to the defence of her EastEnders co-star who mistakingly left upcoming scripts on public transport.
The actress, 62, first appeared as Cindy Beale in 1988. After staging a spectacular comeback last year, she’s now at the centre of a dramatic Christmas plot.
In upcoming scenes, Cindy’s affair with her former step-son Junior Knight (Micah Balfour) will be exposed to their families.
It’ll be the present that nobody (ok, maybe us) wants to receive this yuletide!
Ahead of an eventful festive season, Michelle has now addressed an unfortunate blunder made by one of her fellow cast last month.
Top secret information was uncovered by a member of the public, who found a number of documents for episodes that will play out over the next month.
After spotting the documents left behind by an unnamed actress on a train, he then took them home to his superfan wife in the hope they could safely return them.
Although they reportedly reached out to the star on Instagram, they failed to get in touch and instead handed them over to The Sun, who went onto stage an elaborate photoshoot as they handed them over at the BBC soap’s Hertfordshire production base.
A reporter was pictured shaking hands with George Knight actor Colin Salmon outside of Walford East tube station, though it is understood that he was not the actor who misplaced them.
‘Things happen,’ said Michelle about the incident.
‘They’ve left government documents on trains. And when you’re rushing and you’re tired. . . I’m surprised it hasn’t happened more, let’s put it that way.’
She continued to Fabulous Magazine: ‘If I’m reading my scripts on a train I’ll put it in a folder. But I very rarely do it, because people are nosy. I’ve usually got my head buried in a book.’
Last year, amid her return after 25 years, the show went to desperate measures to conceal her identity.
‘I was far more careful when I was coming back, because obviously it was a surprise,’ she admitted.
‘The scripts had different names in them as well. It didn’t have my name – it had a code name.’
This device isn’t exclusive to Cindy Beale – Michelle has revealed that with a large number of former characters returning to Walford in recent months, they’re all given pseudonyms.
The scripts were handed back to Colin Salmon – though he wasn’t the actor responsible (Picture: BBC/Jack Barnes/Kieron McCarron)
‘All the old characters have a different name,’ she said.
‘It’s quite confusing. But they do it so that if scripts get out, people don’t know who is involved.
‘They just don’t want to spoil things for people.’
Speaking about Cindy’s explosive festive story, Michelle went on to say that the episodes are ‘better’ than the iconic 1986 instalment which saw Den Watts (Leslie Grantham) hand his wife Angie (Anita Dobson) their divorce papers.
Michelle has teased that this Christmas will be ‘better’ than 1986 (Picture: BBC Picture Archives)
‘Angie, Den and the divorce set the precedent’ she said.
‘It was so good that now it’s like: “Oh, we’ve got to deliver a Christmas EastEnders classic, because everyone – even people who don’t normally watch it – tune in.”
‘It will hopefully be a classic EastEnders and will deliver what people want.
‘You can’t compare it to past Christmases, but I would say this one is very different. Hopefully, people won’t be disappointed.’
