Gillian Wright: ‘A lot of my early acting experience came from The Salvation Army’

War Cry’s Claire Brine talks to Gillian Wright about portraying Jean Slater in EastEnders and the role The Salvation Army played in her life.

There was explosive drama in Albert Square last month. Doof! EastEnders celebrated its 40th anniversary. Doof! And soap bosses promised that the ‘shocking twists’ would change the Square and ‘the lives of those who live in it – for ever’. (Cue multiple doofs and music.)

While stars of the BBC1 soap remained tight-lipped on the details of the anniversary storylines, fans were speculating for weeks about what’s in store. Who would be revealed as Cindy Beale’s Christmas attacker? What trouble would Grant Mitchell cause on his return to Walford?

The other big news revealed to viewers in the run-up to the soap’s birthday week was that – for the first time – they could vote on the outcome of a long-running romantic storyline. Denise Fox’s future was in the audience’s hands. Who would viewers choose for her to be with – husband Jack or secret lover Ravi?

A couple of weeks before the storylines begin to unfold on screen, I spoke to Gillian Wright, who plays Jean Slater. Of course, her lips were sealed on the plot twists of the anniversary episodes – but conversation flowed when I broached the subject of the live special that aired on Thursday 20 February.

‘It’s a heap of work to create a live episode, so the cast and crew have been rehearsing a lot,’ says Gillian. ‘And it’s so lovely to be able to do that. Usually, when we film EastEnders, we have to work very quickly. We have four or five cameras in the studio, and filming is like jumping on a fast-moving train. You can’t do take after take after take. There’s just no time.

‘But with a live episode, we get to rehearse a lot. And that’s great because, as actors, you get the opportunity to not do the first thing that comes into your head. You can try out other ways of saying the line.’

Gillian made her first EastEnders appearance in 2004, when the character of Jean was introduced as part of a storyline concerning Stacey Slater, her daughter. From the start, it was apparent that Jean was struggling with her mental health – and the relationship she had with Stacey was rocky.

‘At first, I appeared only in occasional episodes, which were used to explain Stacey’s arrival in the Square,’ remembers Gillian. ‘But then the writers wanted to make Jean a regular character. And we decided that she would suffer from bipolar disorder.

‘In the early days, Jean was in a very dark and unpleasant state. She was tricky to deal with and really hated Stacey. But when she became a regular character, we knew that we couldn’t maintain that level of intensity with her. Firstly, it wouldn’t be watchable in the long term. Secondly, it wouldn’t have been healthy for me to inhabit the role. So, gradually, we toned her down a bit.

‘Over the years, Jean has gone through huge changes. I think the biggest change took place when Stacey was diagnosed as bipolar, because Jean knew that she had to grow up a bit and accept some responsibility. She became worried about Stacey and started to be more of a mother to her. Their relationship has continued to evolve.’

In 2006, Gillian won a Mental Health Media Award for her sensitive portrayal of a character living with bipolar disorder. She was grateful to learn that her performance had struck a chord with viewers.

‘Playing somebody with bipolar is a huge responsibility that I take very seriously,’ she says. ‘I go to great lengths to make sure that what I am doing on screen comes from a place of truth – because if we portray bipolar disorder incorrectly, it’s insulting to those affected by it. If ever I thought that someone was watching EastEnders and throwing their slipper at the TV, yelling that “bipolar isn’t like that”, I’d be mortified.’

After talking with me about her years of playing Jean, Gillian looks back further over her life and speaks about her childhood. She was born in 1959 and raised in a Christian family. Every Sunday, they went to a Salvation Army corps in Reading.

‘My dad’s family had been in The Salvation Army for generations, so I was taken along as a babe in arms,’ she says. ‘I grew up going to Sunday services at the Reading Central Corps, where my dad was the treasurer and played in the band, and my mum was a Sunday school teacher. My sister and I were junior soldiers and sang in the singing company.

‘We went on Sunday marches, served soup to people at the Reading Festival, and I even collected for the annual appeal, knocking on people’s doors in freezing weather to pick up the donation envelopes we’d posted a few days before. On Sundays, my family would take a picnic lunch and tea to the hall, because we knew that we would be there all day for the morning, afternoon and evening meetings.’

Being part of a lively church kept Gillian busy. It also offered her opportunities to explore her creative side.

‘A lot of my early acting experience came from The Salvation Army,’ she says. ‘My mum often performed monologues or recitations during meetings, and I started doing the same. We used to join up with other corps to rehearse and put on musicals. I also remember an occasion when I wrote a script for a Salvation Army event at the Royal Albert Hall. I was just a teenager, but I took the Sunday school kids up to London, by minibus, to perform it.’

Whatever activities Gillian was involved with, she understood that members of The Salvation Army had a mission that was motivated by their Christian faith. Some of the preachers she encountered at Reading Central made a lasting impression on her.

‘One, in particular, was so dramatic in delivering his sermons that you would listen to everything he said,’ she recalls. ‘I found the Army a joyful place to be, and I look back on it with fondness. It gave me a strong bedrock of what was right and wrong. It instilled in me the value of social justice and caring for others.’

It also introduced Gillian to the idea that there was a God who loved her.

‘I remember being very young when I came to understand that God was with me everywhere,’ she says. ‘And it worried me – because when bedtime came and I climbed into my single bed, I thought I was squashing God! I kept waking up at night to say sorry for squeezing him out. In the end, I think I asked him to sleep on the floor.’

Though Gillian is no longer a regular churchgoer, she remains grateful to The Salvation Army for its influence on her life.

‘I still have a faith – but it’s a quiet one,’ she says. ‘And sometimes I pray. Every Sunday morning, when Radio 4 broadcasts worship services from different churches, I find myself singing along to the hymns, surprising myself by how much I remember them.

‘One thing I’ll never forget from my time in The Salvation Army is the number of people I met who – when I was out door-to-door collecting – told me that it was the only charity they donated to, because it was on the front line during the Second World War. Stories like that really impacted me – because I knew that I was part of something important.’

• Watch the EastEnders 40th anniversary on BBC iPlayer.