Angie Watts - Character Development

Character Development

The Watts were the surprise hit characters of the show. Angie and Den were a live-wire couple whose on/off relationship made the Queen Vic pub exciting and unpredictable and millions of viewers tuned in to watch the destruction of their relationship on-screen. Den's clashes with Angie brought EastEnders to a peak of popularity and toppled rival soap Coronation Street from the top of the ratings chart.

During 1986 the series became dominated by Angie and Den's storylines and the focus of the programme was very much concentrated on their combustible relationship. The emphasis began early in 1986 with the arrival of Den's mistress Jan Hammond. Jan had been a powerful off-screen presence for the first year. Her menacing voice at the end of the telephone severely affected the mood of both Den and Angie and kept the audience on edge every time the phone rang. Jan's physical arrival at the Vic in January 1986 was one of the show's dramatic highlights. Her invasion of Angie's territory was a springboard to future emotional fireworks and a pre-cursor to Angie's further dependence on alcohol and her attempted suicide. Dobson had been opposed to the suicide storyline from the beginning, she fought hard to get the scripts changed but she was eventually persuaded to play the scenes and was applauded for a "brilliant performance". However Angie's suicide attempt provoked a massive reaction, not all of it favourable. There was a public outcry about the last two shots of the suicide episode, and Julia Smith subsequently had to cut one of them for the omnibus edition. Some accused the programme of sensationalising suicide and giving ideas to copy-cats. The build up to Angie's desperate action and its sickening aftermath were intended to demonstrate the full despair of her situation and Holland and Smith have maintained that the horror of its on-screen depiction was meant to deter, not encourage, the act.

Den and Angie's traumatic two-hander episode in October 1986 was a risky experiment. A thirty minute episode with only two people in it had never been attempted in a soap before. Holland and Smith feared that the episode would not hold up, however press and audience alike were in agreement that it did. Once it was done, it set a precedent and the programme has featured two-handers ever since. The episode was structured like a "tennis match" between Angie and Den, with a non-speaking window-cleaner forever strolling innocently into the action. It began with Den trying to tell Angie that he wanted a divorce. Angie was shocked and for a moment defeated, but she then dropped her bombshell and told Den that she only had six months to live. At first Den didn't believe her, but eventually Angie's hysterical performance convinced him. He crumbled and promised to stay with her and only after he left did Angie smile in triumph, letting the audience in on her secret that it was all a big lie. Written by Jane Hollowood and directed by Antonia Bird, this episode is considered to be one of the finest episodes in EastEnders catalogue.

The Den/Angie/Jan triangle was to continue for many months. The climax was a trip to Venice when Angie, convinced that Den had finished with his mistress, was taken there for a second-honeymoon, returning to London on the Orient Express. This gave the writers and producers an opportunity to open the show up from the confines of Albert Square. However the trip to Venice was fraught with problems and Dobson, Leslie Grantham (Den) and Jane How (Jan) were hounded by the press at all times. Their photographs appeared in British newspapers, thus ruining the shock surprise that Tony Holland had created, by including Den's mistress in the episode. Despite huge efforts from all involved the Venice episodes were only moderately successful, although the revelations discovered by Den in the episode set the scene for one of EastEnders most renown episodes, which aired on Christmas Day that year. After over-hearing his wife confess that her illness was fabricated, Den filed for divorce. 30.1 million viewers tuned in on Christmas Day in 1986 to witness Den handing Angie her divorce papers, giving the soap its highest ever episode rating, which has yet to be beaten by any other plotline from any other soap in the UK.

This storyline saw the separation of Den and Angie. Holland and Smith had anticipated that Den and Angie would be popular, but they had not guessed how hysterical the reaction to them would be. It was decided that Den and Angie would have to be played down for a while so that other characters would have the opportunity to shine through. The next few years saw Den and Angie struggle to get by without each other and eventually they reunited as business partners. However in 1988 Anita Dobson decided that she wanted to move on after three years playing Angie. She left in May 1988. Despite many alleged attempts at getting Dobson to reprise the role, she never accepted, commenting: "Why tarnish the gorgeous creation that was Angie Watts?". The character of Angie Watts was subsequently killed off-screen in 2002 (dying of a drink related illness) and brought home to be buried by her on-screen daughter Sharon in order to facilitate the return of the actress Letitia Dean. In 2010, Dobson said she was glad her character was killed off, as it was unrealistic that the character would ever return.

In February 2011 Dobson said that she had no regrets being in EastEnders, as it propelled her to fame, and said she believed that people were drawn to Angie because she is a survivor and funny—qualities that drew Dobson herself to Angie. She said " could be on the floor, drunk, weeping buckets, mascara everywhere, then drag herself up the next morning in that old blue dressing gown, tidy herself up and be in the bar that night telling jokes and looking a million dollars."