EastEnders star Perry Fenwick, who plays Billy Mitchell in the soap, revealed that there was a last-minute change to Lola Pearce-Brown's (Danielle Harold) final scenes.
During terminally ill Lola's penultimate episode, she shared a heartbreaking goodbye with her grandfather Billy as her life was coming to an end.
A distraught Billy had been arrested after smashing the Minute Mart window following a row with Nish Panesar (Navin Chowdhry) and accidentally assaulted police officer Jack Branning (Scott Maslen) on the Square.
After being released from police custody, Billy rushed to Lola's bedside to tell her how much he loved her.
Despite Lola being in and out of consciousness all day, she managed to utter her last words as she replied: "Pops. I love you too."
Perry revealed that the emotional line was never actually in the script, but was added in by Danielle herself after getting permission from an EastEnders medical advisor.
Speaking to Digital Spy at The British Soap Awards 2023, Perry told them: "Danielle put in a line that wasn't in the scripts. It was when she woke up and she said 'I love you too, Pops' and then a little tear came down. That sent me going!
"Danielle added it and it wasn't in the scripts. That did eventually become Lola's last words. We were in bits. We had to take a decent break afterwards, after doing some scenes. But Danielle has been fantastic."
He continued: "It was hard, because we've got a parallel story going on. We've got Billy, Honey and Lola — and Perry, Emma and Danielle. So a lot of the scenes are very much about her going. OK, it's not the same as the story, but it's still tears of sadness.
"It was a tough schedule, but we all committed to it. We ended up calling Danielle 'Thames Water', because she could turn on the tears like that!"
EastEnders airs Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings at 7.30 pm on BBC One — see our TV Guide for full listings. You can also catch up on episodes on BBC iPlayer now.
