Former EastEnders writer Sarah Phelps says she thinks she knows who killed Lucy Beale, but she’ll be keeping her lips sealed in the run-up to the storyline’s climax on Thursday!
“I know who I think did it,” says Sarah, who wrote over 50 episodes of the soap between 2002 and 2007. “But I ain’t saying. I really want to see if I’m right. It’s a great storyline!”
Speaking about her time on the soap, Sarah – whose adaptation of The Casual Vacancy, JK Rowling’s first novel since the Harry Potter series hits screens this month – spoke of how she still loves the soap just as much as ever.
“Yeah I still watch it. I love it. I watched it when it first started and I still watch it now. I’m really proud of the work I did on EastEnders and I think we did some great storylines…
“I loved Stacey Slater and her family. I loved doing the Watts clan. I brought Den back from the dead and then I killed him and dug him up again which was a joy! I wrote the end of Paul Truman which I was very proud of because those three episodes were as noir as you can get. I loved that character, but he just ran out of living.”
Sarah went on to say how much she enjoyed writing for some of the older characters in the soap and even how heartbroken she was when one of them left the show a couple of years ago.
“I could write Pat Butcher all day,” she explains. “I wouldn’t have killed that character, but there we go… and Dot and Jim Branning, I could write their bickering and banter until it came out of my ears!”
Some critics may have described her as one of the best writers in EastEnders history, but Sarah still remembers the warning she received when she first joined the soap…
“They said to me when I joined ‘If you think you can come ere and treat the show as a way to earn money while you’re waiting for Hollywood to discover you then you can f**k off – because this show will find you out’ and it does.”
The Casual Vacancy starts at 9pm on Sunday February 15th on BBC One.
