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Observer
Farewell Albert Square
Leaving EastEnders will make Tamzin Outhwaite one of the BBC's highest paid stars. But why, asks Euan Ferguson, does she have to join the Army?
Sunday November 25, 2001
The Observer
The big question about EastEnders, I say to Tamzin Outhwaite, is this. Why, on EastEnders, does no one do one of the two things that real East Enders spend much of their lives doing: swearing, and watching EastEnders?
She has the grace to laugh: a slightly dirty laugh, and unforced, a welcomely innocent sound in our false surroundings. We are eating - trying to eat - some BBC food in a small, boiling room at the Elstree studios in Borehamwood. Outside the window, hastily disassembled scenery flats line the paths, each with its own scribbled title - Beppe's Flat, Sperm Clinic - and the main sound-stage is guarded as closely as Boston Airport. Inside, Outhwaite is trying not to grumble about the food. 'This isn't salad, it's just four bits of lettuce. I'm not being snobby, I just don't want to eat another sandwich, you never get anything but bloody sandwiches, do you think we might be able to find a tomato...'
She stops, worried that she's sounding like a fussy thesp, and remembers the question, and arches an eyebrow, as if it's the first time it has ever struck her. 'You're right. Nobody watches EastEnders. Nobody seems to watch telly, or talk about it. And the swearing... well, you come close. But you can do as much with a "You f..." or "You b..."' - she twists her face up, glares in disgust and shakes her head slowly from side to side - 'and you don't have to say it. Better that way, probably. But yeah, it's funny, innit?'
There's a refreshing lack of cynicism about Outhwaite, although she's learning. She won't talk about her love life, for instance - 'No matter what you say, who you say it to, it ends up being distorted, and as soon as I start living my life as a celebrity rather than an actress it'll all fall apart' - so I learn little about the rumours of canoodlings with Jamie Theakston, which suits me just fine. It's part of the reason, she admits later, she wouldn't want to live in Walford: 'I wouldn't like the feeling that everybody knows my business all the time.'
Care for her privacy is one of the biggest things she has learnt, during a whirlwind recent past that must be every chorus girl's dream. Plucked from relative obscurity in the West End, doing stints as, for instance, the flower-seller in Oliver!, Outhwaite burst onto our screens as Melanie Healy in EastEnders three years ago. The camera loved her, the audiences loved her, and recently she was voted the second sexiest woman on TV (after Nigella). And along the way she got to marry Ian and Steve, sleep with half of the rest of the cast - this is as Mel, not Tamzin - get outrageously drunk, get kidnapped, burn down a club, yell 'you b...' at Barbara Windsor and watch the ratings continue to rise. Mel was possibly the most instant hit the show has had on its hands since its inception, and Outhwaite isbecoming one of the BBC's highest-paid stars, signing a two-year golden-handcuffs deal understood to be close to £2m.
Not with EastEnders, however - for, as quickly as she arrived, she's orf. First to be seen swimming with dolphins in Florida in a documentary next week and then, long-term, to follow Nick Berry and Michelle Collins and Ross Kemp and Letitia Dean and another dozen into the risky world of mainstream drama.
Risky because, while the first two have had notable successes, other results have been... mixed. Risky because Lynda La Plante will doubtless be having a go soon, as she did recently, at the whole process of soap stars going mainstream and the supposed threat this poses to 'real drama'- a charge Tamzin rejects: 'It's daft to try to categorise so easily - soap star or drama star - and, besides, I think EastEnders is drama anyway.'
I can sense some critical pencils being sharpened already. Red Cap, which airs over Christmas and the New Year and which BBC1 has high hopes of making into series next year, stars Outhwaite as the 'bold and uncompromising Sergeant Jo McDonagh', the newest plainclothes recruit to the elite British Army unit of the Royal Military Police. She is, apparently, a woman in a man's world. Her character, Outhwaite says, with eager innocence, is feisty but likable. 'She's the underdog that wins through, but still doesn't take any crap from anybody.'
And Red Cap may well be wonderful, a new Heartbeat for our times, but it seems a shame that everyone who goes from EastEnders into 'mainstream' drama seems to have to play a feisty underdog in the police, or army, or bomb disposal veterinarian unit.
Why was she doing it?
'I just think that Mel had run her course for now. Apart from anything else' - and here comes another filthy laugh - 'she'd slept with everyone.
'And I'd always tried to keep every avenue open, even before EastEnders. I was doing musicals, but I would also be in commercials, then might do a TV job later same day; then I went up to Scarborough to do some work with Alan Ayckbourn, which was a tremendous education in itself.' It was shortly after this when it all started to go horribly right: she finished one Ayckbourn run at the end of June three years ago, auditioned for EastEnders on 5 July, and found she had the job on the 8th. 'And EastEnders has a great policy of looking after you by letting you go off and do things if you need to: it keeps you interested and you come back refreshed.'
Did she feel any jealousy from the longer-serving cast members, who, while quite possibly loved by the nation, are pretty determinedly type cast now? 'No, no. And if I had a family - I'd like to one day get married and the rest, but not yet - but if I did I would completely understand staying on EastEnders. What a great way to keep a reliable income, I'd do it myself.
'And it has been lovely. I was a fan before - Bianca was my favourite - so it was exciting joining it not just as an actress but as me. The hardest thing, at the beginning, was not to call people by their character. And then you get to know them, over a period - it's a pretty warm place - and there are now friends, such as Lucy Benjamin [who plays Lisa], that I'll be staying in touch with for a long time.
'It has been hard work - very hard, sometimes. It takes a certain kind of actor to hold 16 scripts in your head at one time, and to turn on anger, or tears, 10 times a day to order; the talent on EastEnders should never ever be underestimated. Sometimes you wouldn't get home till 11 in the evening. Apart from anything else, it means you miss EastEnders. You start relying on people you meet in the street to tell you what's being going on in the other plotlines.
'My highlights? I loved the Ian Beale wedding, then getting together with Steve. Then the sleeping with Phil scene, at Christmas. Then the kidnapping. Which was good, but difficult. The best thing was, throughout, there was some fun. I never came in thinking I really don't want to be here.'
Along the way she has also learnt how to cope with increasing celebrity. She's young, she's pretty and everyone watches her: it wasn't long before she began to get stopped in the street. 'The good ones are those that just smile, knowingly, and you can smile back, knowing that they know that you know. Then there's the ones that want to speak, or touch you, but that's OK. The kids are the best, natural and raw and innocent, they just shout, "Oh my God, Mum, it's Mel." And they fill you in on what Steve's been up to.
'There are also the papers, of course. Press attention can be fine in its way, if it helps you publicise whatever you're doing, but a lack of press attention actually gives you more time to concentrate on work. As soon as you start believing your own press, whether it's negative or positive, if it's not being backed up by the work the whole thing's empty. Work's the thing.
'I'm quite conscious that it's a risk, this move. You can always choose wrongly, you could make continuous bum decisions. But sometimes it just needs one good decision and it all works. Also, the quality of scripts I'm seeing these days is really high; the stories are diverse, but there are a lot you know would work, real page-turners - like Red Cap, which I knew I wanted to do as soon as I started reading it.'
Ideally, she says, she'd like to do a filmed musical. 'Something with Baz Luhrmann. God I'd love that - Moulin Rouge, Strictly Ballroom... I just adore them. Something with music but done with irony, something with different levels going on, dark and light at the same time.'
In the meantime, there are a few months' filming left at Elstree before Mel's - doubtless dramatic - departure from Walford, and Outhwaite's thoughtful farewells to those she has lived and worked with.
Do they have leaving parties?
'I don't know, not really... there are too many ins and outs these days. There was a big party when Ross [Kemp] left - but he'd been there for 11 years. Me? Hey, they'll have forgotten me six weeks after I'm gone.'
Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001
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