Adam Woodyatt joined Steph’s Packed Lunch earlier today (1st April) and spoke about whether he would return to EastEnders in the future.
The actor, who’s best known for playing Ian Beale on the long-running BBC soap, left in early 2021 for an “extended break”, but is yet to return. In his time away, he’s appeared on stage in Looking Good Dead and of course took part in I’m A Celebrity 2021 as a late arrival with Simon Gregson.
Speaking to Steph McGovern about whether he would ever return to the character, Adam admitted the future is uncertain.
When asked why he chose to leave EastEnders, Adam explained: “I’ve kind of left, but not left. It’s kind of the way the storyline has gone… I’m not there.”
But when pressed on whether he could go back, the actor cryptically replied: “I could go back, and I could not go back. I don’t know!
“The speculation has been hysterical. I think everyone is always going to speculate.
“But there are no plans at the moment.”
Adam went on to talk about how “liberating” his time away from Ian Beale has been.
“I’ve been having a ball,” he explained. “Being back on stage, I’d forgotten why I fell in love with acting because you get that immediate response.
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“You’ve got an audience. If you do something on television, you could be waiting six weeks to three months a year.”
Adam has been fairly consistent about whether he would return to EastEnders, telling Sunday Brunch in January (via Digital Spy) that he had no plans to ask to go back.
“I left because of the way the storyline was going, because Ian needed to go. Not me going, ‘I wanna leave’, or them saying, ‘You’re going’. That was the storyline.”
He continued: “They’ve got to come up with a storyline; they’ve got to ask me to go back. The timing has got to be right for me to go back, because I don’t know what else I’m going to be doing.”
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