Kelvin Carpenter - Character Creation and Development

Character Creation and Development

Kelvin Carpenter was one of the original twenty-three characters invented by the creators of EastEnders, Tony Holland and Julia Smith. Kelvin was originally intended to be named Kevin, and his father Tony Carpenter was originally named Alan. They were the first black characters to appear in the soap. Black and Asian characters were two ethnic minorities that had previously been under-represented in British soap before EastEnders aired. Holland and Smith knew that for the soap to succeed there needed to be a varied group of characters, so that several different sections of the audience had someone to identify with. Additionally, if the programme was to be realistic, it had to reflect the cross-section of society that actually existed in the real location. For these reasons, different sexes, ages, classes, religions and races were all included in the original character line-up. Both Holland and Smith had been at the forefront of the move towards 'integrated casting' in television and had encountered an array of ethnic diversities in the process. Even though the ethnic minority groups were deemed the hardest to research, Holland and Smith called upon their contacts to relay information about their origins and lifestyles and were then able to portray Walford's most recent immigrants more realistically.

Kelvin's original character outline as written by Smith and Holland appeared in an abridged form in their book, EastEnders: The Inside Story (In this passage, Kelvin will be referred to as Kevin and his father as Alan).

"Kevin wants to stay with his dad...How would Alan react to the discovery that Kevin's visiting his mother? How would Kevin react to his father trying to smuggle a woman for the night? And, how would dad react to son doing the same thing? What happens when they're competing for the same woman? As he wants to leave his mark - physically - on the walls of the building, so he wants to leave his mark on his son. Will Kevin take it, or leave it?" (page 58).

The actor Paul Medford had been recommended for the role by four separate agencies. He was London born, and they deemed him good-looking, fashionable and street-credible, making him ideal for their vision of Kelvin. After a subsequent and successful reading with the actor Oscar James (who played his father), Medford was cast in the role. James was physically much bigger than Medford, and Holland and Smith thought it was a good idea for Tony and Kelvin to be not only different in ages, but different physical types as well. Storywise it was felt it would be possible to build on this and also give them different attitudes and beliefs.

Kelvin became one of the most popular young characters in the show's early years. Several of his early storylines were actually intended for the character Mark Fowler, but following the impromptu departure of David Scarboro (the original Mark) his storylines were subsequently given to Kelvin, Michelle Fowler and Ian Beale. The character of Kelvin remained in the show for over two years, and was eventually written out when Paul Medford decided to follow his ambition of becoming a singer/dancer on stage in 1987.

In his final scene, Kelvin left the square without attending his leaving party. The real reason for this is because 'lot recordings' (scenes recorded on site in Albert Square) for each week's episodes normally occur two weeks before the studio recordings for the same episodes. When the leaving party was recorded in the studio, Paul Medford was already out of contract and had left the show.