Despite plenty of blunders in past EastEnders live episodes, it hasn't stopped the cast giving it another go. Soap bosses will bring Walford to life in front of a live audience once again this evening as part of the 40th anniversary celebrations. The live shows are one of the most highly anticipated dates in viewers' calendars as the BBC broadcasts to the unforgiving public. Nobody can be quite prepared for what to expect when the cameras get rolling and this time, there will be a groundbreaking twist.
Viewers will be able to interact with the show like never before as they are asked to make two big decisions that will shape the future of Albert Square. Fans can decide who Denise ends up with as well as picking Sonia's baby name. Ahead of the highly anticipated episode, we take a look back at some of the biggest live fails EastEnders has ever seen, including the infamous "How's Adam?" gaffe to twitchy corpses...
In 2015, Jo Joyner, who plays Tanya Branning, accidentally called Ian Beale actor Adam Woodyatt by his real name, in a scene with Ian's wife Jane. "How's Adam?," Tanya asked, as Jane looked panicked, and the two women just stared at each other wide-eyed in a tense awkward silence.
Jo later told Gaby Roslin on her BBC London Radio show that she broke down in tears after fluffing the line. “There is no explanation as to how or why it happened, we couldn’t have known it better, we went over and over it, and I never got it wrong in rehearsals," she said.
“When it happened, it was like an out of body experience, like a car crash. As I was saying ‘Adam’ I could feel myself trailing off, there was no way I could get out of that one.” She added that moments before she was due to take part in her next live scene, she was hyperventilating from nerves. And Jo remains haunted by her mistake as she revealed she still had people asking her “How's Adam?“, years after the episode aired.
In 2010, the live episode Who Killed Archie Mitchell? saw Bradley Branning (Charlie Clements) die after he fell from the roof of the Queen Vic. When his father Max Branning (Jake Wood) saw his bloodied dead body, he was supposed to immediately vomit with horror. But poor Jake was unable to make himself sick on cue without any assistance – so unfortunately he was forced to stick his fingers down his throat to get a realistic retch.
He later spoke about the awkward incident on This Morning, explaining: "Well it was in the script that Max saw Bradley lying dead and was sick, so at some point we talked about putting the liquid in my mouth then realise we’d have no time to do that. But to me [what I did] felt very real, if you were going to be sick anyway that you might do that, to get it all out.".
Meanwhile, eagle-eyed viewers noticed Bradley's supposedly dead body actually moved, rather destroying the illusion. Tweets at the time included: "Anyone watching eastenders, is it just me or is bradley moving wayyy too much to be dead :'))." "Just watched live Eastenders. Is Bradley dead? His fingers were still moving as he was lying on the pavement," added another. "Bradley was moving his hand, when he was dead #eastenders," noted a third.
Bradley's wife Stacey Slater, played by Lacey Turner, subsequently called her own husband by the wrong name as she shouted "Charlie" - the name of the actor. She was not the only actor to fluff their lines, however, as Ian Beale (Adam Woodyatt) accidentally said "slop it" instead of "stop it".
Scott Malsen, who plays Jack Branning, also said: "Bradley didn't tell the public" instead of "Bradley didn't tell the police," as he mumbled and forgot his lines at the start of the episode, a blunder he later put down to nerves. Peggy Mitchell, played by the legendary late Barbara Windsor, accidentally called her on-screen stepdaughter Janine Butcher (Charlie Brooks) "June". And Samantha Womack, who played Ronnie Mitchell, admitted she messed up a scene when she walked out of the shop forgetting to pay for the paint stripper - though this went largely unnoticed by viewers until she fessed up.
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