Carmel Jackson - Character Creation

Character Creation

In July 1984, before EastEnders went to air, the show's creators, Tony Holland and Julia Smith, attended an opening evening at the Anna Scher Theatre School in North London, in order to find actors for roles in their upcoming serial. According to Holland and Smith, Anna Scher's school was unlike many other drama schools, where students were "ironed out", all looking and sounding the same. At Anna Scher's school, students' natural personalities and accents were encouraged, "her students aren't taught how to act, they're helped to dig inside themselves and be." In Holland and Smith's own words, this was "just the sort of non-acting that was looking for".

Often, former students who were already working in the acting profession attended Scher's classes, and on the night Holland and Smith attended, actress Judith Jacob performed. Holland and Smith described Jacob as "an old friend", as they had previously worked with her on their medical drama Angels, where Jacob had played nurse Beverley Slater between 1979 and 1981. Following the end of the class, Holland and Smith concluded that Judith Jacob "had been as good as ever", but that "there wasn't really a part for her" in the original character line-up.

However, in 1986, a year after the soap had first aired, Jacob was recruited by Julia Smith and offered a part in the serial, the minor role of Carmel Roberts, a health visitor who tended to the character Michelle Fowler (Susan Tully) after the birth of her baby Vicki. In his book, EastEnders: The First 10 Years, author and EastEnders scriptwriter Colin Brake has used Carmel as an example of the way minor characters can develop in EastEnders: "Often a new character is introduced for a limited number of episodes, to serve a particular storyline or the story function. If the casting is good and the character 'works' on the screen, then the writers may be asked if there is potential in the character for further appearances." This occurred with the character of Carmel, and later in 1986 she was reintroduced as a regular character, moving to the soap's focal setting of Albert Square.