Changing Faces – or, growing up soap-style

Peter Beale returned to Albert Square last Friday (EastEnders Friday 7 June) and it looks like all that time spent surfing off the Devon coast has done him the world of good – he’s like a new man. Actually, he is a new man.

Ben Hardy as Peter Beale

The change from childhood to young adulthood is never an easy one but in soap-land the journey can often be more perilous than in life. Cute children regularly disappear, only to reappear at a later date as older, sexier (and in the case of females, often thinner) versions of their former selves. It’s a wonder that soap parents don’t ask more awkward questions about where their children have been and what they’ve been up to.

Perhaps the decision to change actors is driven by more than purely physical considerations. After all, the skills needed to play an adorable 10-year-old will be different than those needed to portray a rebellious teenager and different again to those required to convince as someone taking their first, uncertain steps into the adult world (or as a monstrous killer).

At EastEnders, these cast changes seem to happen fairly frequently. It’s not just Peter Beale (who’s now been played by four actors) who has transformed recently; last year Hetti Bywater took over the role of his sister, Lucy, from Melissa Suffield, who had played the part since 2004. Even little brother Bobby was re-cast earlier this year. Other recent changes have been made to the actors who play Lauren Branning and Ben Mitchell.

Obviously it’s not only in EastEnders that these transformations occur. Over on Emmerdale, Isabel Hodgins took over the role of Vicky Sugden from Hannah Midgley in 2006 and little Belle Dingle has had three actors play her already (including a baby boy).

Nor is it a new phenomenon; the first Tracy Barlow – Christabel Finch – retired to her room in No.1 Coronation Street in 1983 and wasn’t seen again for two years. And now she was being played by Holly Charmette. Charmette left in March 1988 and nine months later Tracy came back in the guise of 11-year-old Dawn Acton.

Dawn Acton

But does it have to happen? Can a child actor successfully navigate the path into adulthood and hold onto the role they were originally cast in?

Well, yes they can – Sam Aston has been Chesney Brown in Coronation Street since the character first appeared in 2003, taking the part from that of a loveable imp to the wronged husband he now portrays. But in soap, this journey just doesn’t seem to happen very often for a young actor; unlike, for example, in a long-running sitcom such as Outnumbered, where the cast of children has grown up on-screen before the viewers’ eyes.

I’d suggest the real reason for this difference lies in the format of the shows themselves, in the difference between the relentless, on-going nature of soap compared to the finite lifespan of other long-running shows. Soap has to go on (and on). And to do this it must constantly attract a new audience – a young audience that will then hopefully stick with the programme and continue watching as they get older. And what better way to appeal to a young audience than by giving them characters who can realistically embody the stories that they themselves are experiencing, or will be experiencing in a few years to come.

Kate Ford as Tracy Barlow

But maybe we should spare a thought for those young actors who don’t survive soap’s need to renew its audience. The list of youngsters who didn’t continue in their acting career is a long one, including Dawn Acton, who auditioned for the part of Tracy Barlow when it came up again in 2002, only to lose out to Kate Ford, who plays the role now.

Then again, Danniella Westbrook successfully revived her role as Sam Mitchell in 2009, after a nine-year break when the part was portrayed by Kim Medcalf. And Thomas Law, who played Peter Beale for four years before being replaced by Ben Hardy, recently secured the role of young Gary King in the new Simon Pegg-Edgar Wright movie, The World’s End, proving (if all goes well and he stays clear of Devon) that you can have a career as an actor after playing a soap youngster after all.