ESCAPE PLAN!

Chantelle’s on the verge of getting away from Gray for good…

This week’s scenes see Chantelle make the difficult decision to leave her abusive husband, as she and her parents head off on a family holiday. And Jessica tells us that her character barely has time to pack up her belongings before preparing to flee with her children… “She’s running away with literally just the clothes on her back,” confirms the actress. “All she packs is a shoe box of things that represent the memories she doesn’t want to leave behind. It contains pictures of her children, hospital tags, things that mean a lot to her.” However, Gray’s suspicions have been piqued by his wife’s sudden getaway – and he suggests that she leave their kids Mack and Mia at home with him, so that she can truly enjoy herself! What follows is the most terrifying week of Chantelle’s life, as she desperately tries to outfox her husband and make her escape. However, by the end of the week, the pair are back in Albert Square, which is when the unthinkable happens as Gray ends his wife’s life… Toby explains that filming such a high-stakes block of episodes under current guidelines was a challenging process, but exciting too. “When I read the scripts, I thought they were very ambitious – I really didn’t have a clue how they were going to film it!” he confesses. “The crew had real imagination and ambition to try new things. They had planned it so well, and it was so well organised that we were able to completely focus on the performance – it became a bit like a dance, we really had to choreograph the scenes. We had to just trust that the end result was going to pay off…”