Tony Carpenter


Tony Carpenter is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by Oscar James, from 28 February 1985 until 28 May 1987.
Happy-go-lucky Tony tries to carve himself a successful business and steady home for his family, but nothing he does is ever good enough for his nagging wife.

Storylines

ian born Tony is married to his second wife, Hannah Carpenter, with whom he has two children, Kelvin Carpenter and Cassie Carpenter. However, Tony and Hannah are separated and Hannah is in a relationship with another man. Kelvin lives with Tony, while Cassie stays with Hannah.
Tony has various altercations with the local villain Nick Cotton, and is understandably furious when he discovers that Nick has joined a racist organisation. After Nick taunts Kelvin about the colour of his skin, Tony teaches him a lesson, which at least manages to scare him out of spreading his racial hatred for a while.
In February 1985, Tony secures himself a job renovating The Queen Victoria public house and gives the unemployed Arthur Fowler a job as his aid. It is whilst he is working here that Tony gains the interest of the married landlady Angie Watts. Angie has grown tired of her cheating husband, Den Watts, and whilst he is on a holiday in Spain with his mistress, Angie seduces Tony and they embark on an affair. Tony takes the relationship seriously, but Angie is only using him to get back at Den and make him jealous. The affair is conducted in secret, but after Angie initiates a kiss in The Queen Vic with Tony, she is caught by her adoptive daughter, Sharon Watts. Angie is forced to use bribery to keep her daughter from informing her husband. Upon Den's return, Angie calls off the affair but it is not long before Sharon tells her father that Angie has been unfaithful. However, Den cares more about his reputation than her and tells her that he does not care about the affair, so long as it is done discreetly. Tony is very hurt by the whole ordeal, but he is even more concerned for his own safety, should Den find out that it was him his wife was seeing. Tony's identity is never disclosed to Den, though Den later works it out.
Later, Hannah arrives at Tony's house with the disturbing news that her new lover, Neville Agard, had been beating both her and their daughter Cassie. Tony is furious and promptly confronts Neville, returning later with Hannah and Cassie's belongings and a cut lip. Tony and Hannah reunite and she and Cassie move in, however, Tony is confused when Hannah wants to live in the flat above Tony's instead of with him. Problems still persist, however, and Hannah regularly nags Tony and makes it clear to him that Walford is not good enough for her. Things reach a climax when Tony hits Mehmet Osman the following year for making a pass at Hannah. Hannah is furious and cannot condone Tony's violent actions. Hannah subsequently decides that the marriage is over and she leaves Walford to live with her sister.
Tony spends the rest of the year doing odd-jobs and driving a car for Ali Osman's cab firm. He gets himself into trouble when he buys some stolen silverware from Nick, who later tries to blackmail him. Tony tires of life in Walford and a few months later he departs Albert Square for Trinidad, leaving Kelvin in charge of his property.

Character creation and development

Tony Carpenter was one of the original twenty-three characters invented by the creators of EastEnders, Tony Holland and Julia Smith. Tony was originally intended to be named Alan, and his son Kelvin Carpenter was originally named Kevin. They were the first black characters to appear in the soap. Black and Asian characters were two ethnic minorities that had previously been under-represented in British soap before EastEnders aired. Holland and Smith knew that for the soap to succeed there needed to be a varied group of characters, so that several different sections of the audience had someone to identify with. Additionally, if the programme was to be realistic, it had to reflect the cross-section of society that actually existed in the real location. For these reasons, different sexes, ages, classes, religions and races were all included in the original character line-up. Both Holland and Smith had been at the forefront of the move towards 'integrated casting' in television and had encountered an array of ethnic diversities in the process. Even though the ethnic minority groups were deemed the hardest to research, Holland and Smith called upon their contacts to relay information about their origins and lifestyles and were then able to portray Walford's most recent immigrants more realistically.
Tony's original character outline as written by Smith and Holland appeared in an abridged form in their book, EastEnders: The Inside Story.
Alan's name was later changed to Tony following the development of the character of Ali Osman and Holland and Smith decided they couldn't have two male characters with such similar-sounding names.
Oscar James, an experienced television and theatre actor, was chosen to play the role. James was physically much bigger than they'd originally had in mind, however they felt that his interpretation of Tony would be expansive and get noticed. They also thought it was a nice idea for father and son to be not only different in ages, but different physical types as well. Storywise it was felt it would be possible to build on this and also give them different attitudes.
Tony's storylines mainly centred on his developing relationship with his son, and marital issues with his wife. Before the series began it was decided that Hannah plus their other child, would come back into Tony's life for the sake of the family - but not stay around too long because the neighbourhood would appal her. This was eventually recreated on-screen.
James had initially been full of praise for the way the team had chosen to depict a black family. However, shortly before he left the series in 1987, he controversially criticised EastEnders and the BBC for not promoting their black or other ethnic minority characters:
Tony Carpenter lasted in the show for two years and was the fourth of the original twenty three characters to leave the show after Saeed Jeffery, Andy O'Brien and Debbie Wilkins. Tony returned to Trinidad to search for his roots.