Mary Smith (East Enders) - Creation and Development

Creation and Development

Mary Smith was one of the original twenty-three characters invented by the creators of EastEnders, Tony Holland and Julia Smith. Mary's original character outline as written by Smith and Holland appeared in an abridged form in their book, EastEnders: The Inside Story.

"Aged 19. Mary was brought up in Stockport. Her parents were Irish Catholics...Her father is a long-distance lorry driver....When she left school Mary could hardly read or write, she didn't learn because she didn't want to...She gave no trouble, no aggro, but no-one took any notice of her...Her mother nagged her about her soul...At 15 she went to a gig with a crowd of people from school and in one night her life changed...She fell in love with a band, a man and a culture. She had found her own religion...She became pregnant...Semi-literate, unskilled and at the same time ashamed...She couldn't go back to the oppressive society of her childhood, where everybody judged everybody and where she would be labelled, even by her own mother, as a 'loose woman'...She wouldn't have an abortion...She drifted into our area, and became one of the single parent families that congregate there...Will she be a survivor, or a loser?...Over the months she may develop a fear of authority...Maybe she will be forced to drift into a life of prostitution..." (page 56).

As Holland and Smith wanted a diverse cross-section from the East End community, it was decided that one of the main cast had to be a young, single mother, and as punk music was prominent in British culture at the time, they decided to use a punk image for the character. Holland and Smith decided to cast an unknown actress in the role. They chose Linda Davidson, who was the right age and had been brought up in northern England and therefore had an accent that would befit the character's background.

Mary was one of the most striking of the original characters, a lone mother with a small baby, who hid herself under punk makeup, was unable to read or write and was a northerner alone in a southern city.

One of the most controversial storylines the character was involved in was her dalliance with prostitution in 1987, although it did earn the programme a considerable amount of negative press at the time and was accused of promoting a negative association between single mothers and prostitution. The character of Mary lasted in the show for three years, and was eventually written out of the series when Linda Davidson decided to leave in order pursue other acting roles. On-screen, Mary leaves Walford the way she arrives, running away from her parents.