Whether he’s delivering a hard-hitting EastEnders storyline or a gag in this year’s panto, Steve’s intention is the same: connecting with the audience.
He believes performance truly works when people laugh and cry with you.
By Sarah Becker
There was something slightly surreal about sitting opposite Steve McFadden at the media launch of Beauty and the Beast pantomime at the Royal and Derngate.
For more than three decades, he has been one of Britain’s most recognisable television faces. As EastEnders’ Phil Mitchell, he has spent 30 years at the centre of some of the soap’s biggest storylines, becoming a fixture in millions of living rooms across the country.
“Get out of my pub!”
Yet the man sitting opposite me at the media launch for Royal & Derngate’s Christmas pantomime wasn’t clutching a pint.
He was drinking black tea.
“Not during the week,” he laughs when I mention it. “I’m on my best behaviour.”
We were gathered in the Derngate auditorium to hear about this year’s Christmas production of Beauty and the Beast, which features a star-studded cast including Tracy Beaker star Dani Harmer, pantomime legends, Sam Rabone and Georgia Brierley-Smith, and of course the EastEnders’ star himself, Steve McFadden.
He will be coming to Northampton for his seventh pantomime with Evolution Productions, playing Grumblewart, a villainous henchman created especially for him.
Before talk turned to boos, hisses and festive mayhem, conversation drifted naturally towards EastEnders. It quickly became clear that, after all these years in the spotlight, Steve measures success rather differently from most people.
For him, it all comes down to connection.
Making people cry, making people laugh,” he says. “When you connect with people. To me, it’s like magic. If you see a character cry and you don’t feel anything, and then you see a character cry and you cry with them – it’s magic.
It’s a simple answer, but one that seems to underpin everything he does.
Swapping Albert Square for the Royal & Derngate stage
This Christmas, the setting may be different – swapping Albert Square for a fairy-tale kingdom on the stage of the Royal & Derngate – but the objective remains exactly the same.
“I get the script and try to make it real and deliver it with authenticity,” he says. “How it lands with people, you can’t control that. You can only give your all to try and make it believable.”
Steve believes audiences instinctively know when something feels truthful.
“When they connect with it and come up to you in the street and say, ‘I couldn’t stop crying,’ or ‘I couldn’t stop laughing,’ that’s when you know you’ve done your job.”
“I do get a lot of love and respect from the public, which is lovely.”
He speaks warmly about a recent EastEnders storyline involving Nigel Bates and Alzheimer’s disease.
“Luckily, I work with brilliant Paul Bradley,” he says. “It was quite an unusual storyline.
“You don’t often get the opportunity to play a love story between two men who are getting on a bit – one nearing the end of his life. It was a love story between two older guys who adored each other.
“Sometimes you get a storyline and it connects with people. And that storyline really connected with people.”
I ask him what his favourite storyline has been.
“The alcoholism storyline I played went through all the different emotions of being inebriated,” he says. “It was hard, showing someone becoming an alcoholic. I’m not sure if it was a storyline – it went on for 20 years. It was hard, but I pulled it off.”
Pantomime may seem worlds away from the emotional intensity of EastEnders, but McFadden doesn’t see a huge difference.
“To me, it’s like therapy – a bit of light relief.”
In Beauty and the Beast, McFadden will be playing Grumblewart, a brand-new henchman created by writer and director Paul Hendy. Expect plenty of shouting, growling and opportunities for audiences to boo.
There might be a little sprinkle of Phil Mitchell. Get out of my theatre!’
Creating a memorable pantomime villain is a process that starts with Steve’s recognisable gravelly voice.
I stomp around the house and scream and shout with the script in my hand as I put together a baddie. British actress Beryl Reid believed finding the right pair of shoes was the key to discovering a character’s soul. For me, creating a character usually starts with the voice. Once I get that, the character starts coming to life.
He’s actually been taking part in pantomimes for nineteen years, breathing life into villains including Captain Hook, King Dick and Fleshcreep.
In November, he’ll be taking a break from EastEnders to rehearse for Royal & Derngate’s Christmas panto. There is a crossover period where he learns lines for both shows.
“Sometimes, I’ve got a script in one hand where I’m learning gags, and a script in the other where I’m almost killing myself.”
Surprisingly, with over thirty years in the business coupled with a hardman exterior, he still gets the odd flutter of nerves.
“It’s exciting and nerve-wracking when the curtain goes up,” he says. “Is it going to work?”
He pauses.
“I am looking forward to the curtain going up and being on stage with a live audience and trying to nail it.”
There is no second take. No editing suite. Every laugh, gasp and cheer happens in real time.
He will be joined on stage by Tracey Beaker star Dani Harmer, pantomime dame Sam Rabone and a whole cast of memorable characters.
“We will all be there together,” he says. Who’s coming to watch?
Beauty and the Beast runs at Royal & Derngate from Friday 4 December to Thursday 31 December 2026. For more information and tickets, visit royalandderngate.co.uk/beauty-and-the-beast.
Keep following for more starstudded interviews.