It's hard to imagine EastEnders star Michelle Collins playing anyone else other than the iconic Cindy Beale. However, the soap icon has shared that she actually auditioned to play another legendary character, but didn't get the part.
Michelle Collins is reprising her role as Cindy Beale after 25 years as she makes her permanent return to the Square on Monday, August 28.
It was long believed that Cindy had died during childbirth in prison, however she was brought back from the dead in sensational soap fashion as it was revealed that Cindy had been in witness protection and living under the name Rose Knight for all these years.
As she makes her return to the Square, Michelle opened up about the other memorable character she auditioned to play — and the role in question was just as wild as her current soap alter-ego.
She told What To Watch and other press: "Interestingly enough, I originally went up for the part of Mary the punk when it was called E8 and I didn’t get that."
Mary 'The Punk' Smith went on to be played by Linda Davidson and became one of the most memorable characters due to her being the soap's original wild child.
She appeared in the soap from 1985 to 1988 and was a single mum, who worked as a stripper to provide for her baby Annie and was unable to read.
Mary made a brief return to the Square last year to attend Dot Cotton's (June Brown) funeral and made a guest appearance for the funeral of Dr. Legg in 2019.
Michelle went on to explain how she landed the role of Cindy, revealing that she was only meant to appear in eleven episodes: "Then I was doing a drama for the BBC with Tony Holland and Bill Lyons, and Tony was the co-creator of the show. It was called Pressures and I was playing a motorbike dispatch rider, and what they didn’t know was is that I couldn’t ride the bike so they used to push me in.
"Suddenly Tony said I think you’d be really great in EastEnders so I got an audition and I went to meet Julia [Smith]. It was only for eleven episodes and I thought the character was called Karina and the producer was called Cindy, but it was the other way round! I don’t think she was too happy when I called her Cindy! Julia was quite scary, she was a formidable woman and I’m so glad I got to work with her.
"They did say that it’s for eleven episodes but there might be a chance of you staying. When my contract was up my agent actually didn’t want me to stay because I was working quite a lot, and I said ‘no I really want to stay as I feel this character is really progressing’, so I did for quite a long time!"
EastEnders airs Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings at 7.30 pm on BBC One — see our TV Guide for full listings. You can also catch up on episodes on BBC iPlayer now.
