EastEnders’ Danny Boy Hatchard opens up about his tough Lee Carter suicide storyline on This Morning

DANNY BOY Hatchard has opened up about Lee Carter’s hard hitting suicide storyline on EastEnders.

Speaking to Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby, the actor spoke candidly about how difficult it had been working on the script.

He said: “It can be hard to switch off but it’s like any other job.

“I think that was the route they wanted to go down but they wanted it to branch out to more people so they went with a depression storyline.

“We had a lovely lady come in during from the Samaritans called Lorna and we went through the dialogue.

“We made sure we tackled it as delicately as we would but we needed to be careful because we didn’t want anyone to get any ideas.

“It was nerve wracking but I felt more honoured than anything. It is such an issue at the minute, especially with the stigma that surrounds it.

“When Jonathan Treadwell-Collins approached me and told me where it was going to eventually lead to it was lovely as an actor to get your teeth into something.

“It’s nice to be able to do something that could potentially help people.

Danny Boy was joined on the show by Hussain Manawer who also supported Danny Boy through the storyline with his own experiences.

The topic of mental health became the subject of the This Morning phone in on TuesdayDanny Boy's role as Lee in the soap has touched many lives, with Danny Boy admitting he has people coming up to him in the street to thank him for what he’s done.

He explained: “A lot of kids have approached me, even younger than 16, about it.

“It’s the biggest reward ever knowing you’ve reached out and it’s made a difference.”

Danny - who has played Lee on the BBC soap since 2014 - has worked closely with the show's writers and mental health charities to ensure his characters journey doesn't just suddenly come to an end.

Speaking about the storyline with The Sun Online, Danny said:  “I want to make sure it isn’t just something that happens and then it all gets better for Lee after that because that isn’t the reality.

“It’s about trying to find a healthy balance because mental illness isn’t just something that goes away.

“And I think that’s what the general feeling is for Lee after that. He needs to find himself, he needs to find a healthy balance so he can move forward with his life and that will cause certain things to happen.”

The harrowing scenes have laid bare the struggles of someone suffering from mental illness, something Danny-Boy admits was tough to film.

“Yeah it’s tough. This is my job so I have to detach myself away from it personally and approach it in a professional way.

“I don’t feel alone working on this because I’ve got the EastEnders team here who have been brilliant with my research and the writing and the directing and Sean’s been great.

“I think it’s a collaborative process. Although I am the picture of it and what you see with Lee, there’s been a lot of work behind that and that makes me as an actor feel a lot more comfortable with how I approach these situations.”

The soap worked closely with Samaritans to make sure the story was told sensitively and with care.

Lorna Fraser, the charity's media adviser, said: “We were really happy that EastEnders got in touch with us very early on in developing this element of Lee’s storyline because it is a subject that should be handled responsibly and sensitively.

“And so we’ve been working over several months with [the soap's] researchers and their writers giving advice on various things and this is where soaps can really come into their own in reaching a wide audiences with some really important messages such as Lee's situation and showing that through a culmination of life pressures, pressures that can particularly affect men that he’s reached a very difficult point.”

Got a story? email digishowbiz@the-sun.co.uk or call us direct on 02077824220