Trevor Morgan (East Enders) - Development

Development

In her book Media and violence: gendering the debates, Karen Boyle states that Trevor's introduction to EastEnders follows a theme in British soap operas whereby abusive characters are never completely integrated into the soap community. Trevor's first appearance in EastEnders occurs months after the introduction of the core Slater family, and he is never given a permanent home on Albert Square. Boyle observes that Trevor's status as an outsider means that he is also expelled from the community with relative ease, and that there is "a whiff of divine justice" about his eventual death. In Social issues in television fiction, Lesley Henderson furthers the assessment of Trevor as an outsider with the observation that he was one of very few Scottish characters in the soap's history, and the sole Scottish character at the time.

Ferns was surprised by the storyline which saw Trevor rape Little Mo, opining that EastEnders's executive producer John Yorke "really put his neck on the line by doing it." He found the rape and Christmas attack the most difficult scenes of his career, but found Trevor easier to play as he gained a better psychological understanding of the character. Ainsworth found the Christmas scenes equally difficult, and told Cosmopolitan magazine: "Even though I'm an actress, at that point when I was on the floor, I felt totally and utterly humiliated and sick. I felt Little Mo's degradation at having her head shoved into a plate of food. What was more frightening was I knew this scene could have been real, that it's all part of the power game these men play to make women feel as if they're worthless." At one time, Ferns considered leaving the acting profession to become a counsellor, but felt that he was prevented from doing so by Trevor's high-profile, explaining: "It's difficult enough for people who are grieving without Trevor walking in."