Tony Carpenter - Character Creation and Development

Character Creation and Development

Tony Carpenter was one of the original twenty-three characters invented by the creators of EastEnders, Tony Holland and Julia Smith. Tony was originally intended to be named Alan, and his son Kelvin Carpenter was originally named Kevin. 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.

Tony'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, Tony will be referred to as Alan).

"Alan is Caribbean: one of the "came here when ten" from an idylic life in Trinidad with his gran....A confusing childhood and, at first, he hated England. He felt different, felt coloured, suffered abuse from the white kids...He met Hannah. She was several cuts above him socially. He liked the idea of a "princess" and she liked the idea of a "a bit of rough". In the beginning this made their marriage all the more exciting...But he was short on staying power...In and out of jobs...Boredom always setting in early...A constant desire for change at any price...Hannah meanwhile became more and more stubborn...They set themselves on a collision course...Hannah became too housebound, houseproud, too disciplined with the two children, too rigid, not seeing the wood for the trees. Alan became too anarchic, too sleeping-around, too devil-may-care and up-yours, frequently not seeing the wood for the booze...Perhaps if they split, they could find themselves again?...Alan has bought a house in the Square. His sixteen year old son 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?...The house is the framework. The container...It will change its personality as the owners find theirs..." (page 58-59).

Alan's name was later changed to Tony following the development of the character of Ali Osman and Holland and Smith decided they couldn't have two male characters with such similar sounding names.

Oscar James, an experienced television and theatre actor, was chosen to play the role. James was physically much bigger than they'd originally had in mind, however they felt that his interpretation of Tony would be expansive and get noticed. They also thought it was a nice idea for father and son 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. Oscar James was full of praise for the way the team had chosen to depict a black family.

Tony's storylines mainly centred around his developing relationship with his son, and marital issues with his wife. Before the series began it was decided that Hannah (Tony's wife) plus their other child, would come back into Tony's life for the sake of the family - but not stay around too long because the neighbourhood would appal her. This was eventually recreated on-screen.

Tony Carpenter lasted in the show for two years and was the third of the original cast to leave the show; returning to Trinidad to search for his roots.