EastEnders spoilers follow.
EastEnders star Joel Beckett has explained Jake Moon’s shocking return.
The former EastEnders cast member had a cameo as Jake at the end of Thursday’s (September 12) episode, where his character reunited with Chrissie Watts following her prison release.
Fans had long assumed Jake had been murdered in prison nearly 20 years ago due to a fatal mistake made by his ex-underworld employer Johnny Allen.
Now that Jake and Chrissie are off to start a new life together away from Walford, Joel Becket has opened up about filming his cameo.
“My agent got a phone call asking ‘Would I be interested in going back?’. The second sentence followed ‘just for a day’,” he revealed. “Your mind starts to go through things, especially from a technical point of view, you think, ‘What can they possibly film in a day?’
“I assumed that it would be something to do with Chrissie, but I thought it would be me standing outside the prison gates. I didn’t expect to go back on the Square. So I thought a day going back there after such a long hiatus would be great. It was a lovely day out, as I kept saying when I was on set.”
His time on set may have been brief, but Joel relished the chance to be back in Albert Square after two decades.
“It felt lovely to be back,” he said. “Although it was a new set it felt really familiar, and it felt like I’d never been away. You never forget Albert Square.”
Speaking about EastEnders‘ new set at Elstree Studios, Joel joked: “Everything wasn’t as wobbly. The Square was just a bit sharper, and it felt as though it had been upgraded although the sun sets in a different place. It’s quite amazing to go back there and to be on a different set in a different spot, yet everything felt exactly the same.”
Joel reflected on how it’s been “quite exciting” to bring back Jake since most fans never would have expected it.
“It’s just that one scene right at the end of an episode but it’s been quite fun because nobody knew about it,” he said. “I’m getting a lot of messages today from people who didn’t know saying ‘wow, you’re back’ so the response has been great.”
While Jake just missed crossing paths with his relative Alfie Moon in Thursday’s episode, Joel got a chance to reconnect with Shane Richie during filming with Tracy-Ann Oberman (aka Chrissie).
“It was lovely. I haven’t seen both of them for such a long time,” the actor remembered. “Working with Tracy-Ann, filming that scene; it felt like we’d just picked up where we had left off, which was lovely. Seeing Shane, who is a great pal, but who I haven’t seen for ages was wonderful. We had a big hug, it’s a shame we didn’t get to do any scenes.”
Joel’s cameo was kept secret from the other EastEnders cast members, meaning he wasn’t able to see any of his other old friends.
“I was taken into the studios in a blacked-out car for costume fittings and for filming, so nobody knew that I was there,” he explained. “Then it came to the time where I was asked if I wanted to have a practice run in the car.
“I was asked to drive it around the car park, so I was driving an e-type Jag convertible, with a V12 engine, one of the noisiest things, past all of the dressing rooms, so if anyone didn’t know I was in, they did then.”
With the soap’s 40th anniversary looming, Joel was coy on whether fans can expect to see Jake and Chrissie back in Walford.
“Never say never. I’m sure the audience will let me know if they’d like to see me again, but yes, never say never,” he teased.
EastEnders airs on Mondays-Thursdays at 7.30pm on BBC One. The show also streams on BBC iPlayer, where most episodes drop early at 6am ahead of their TV broadcast.
