EastEnders legend drops big hint she's returning to soap after six years
Actress Bonnie Langford, 59, who played Carmel Kazemi on EastEnders for three years until she left in 2018, has hinted she may be returning to Albert Square as part of EastEnders ’ 40th anniversary celebrations next year.
The soap launched in February 1985, and there are plans for former cast members to return to Walford in 2025 for the ruby anniversary. Speaking to RadioTimes.com , Bonnie said: “Anything can happen, and this is the whole beauty of storytelling. You can tell whatever story you like, and I would be delighted to, and I've got loads of friends there now as well.”
"I'd love to go and see… I would never put a kibosh on anything, because I think anything is possible. It's important, sometimes people want to know what happened - what happened next?”
Bonnie’s character, Carmel, was the mother of market trader Kush and younger son Shakil. She left the Square in 2018 after losing Shakil to knife crime, and moved to Dubai. Kush was later murdered on the soap by serial killer Gray Atkins in 2021.
Despite both her sons having died, Bonnie pointed out that there was still the chance of a return to Walford for Carmel. “Carmel has got a grandson, Arthur, still there, and has a lot of history and a lot of friends, but you just don't know, so you never say never!"
The actress rose to fame as a child star in the 1970s, after winning the talent show Opportunity Knocks at the age of six, and then playing Violet Elizabeth in the TV series Just William. In 1986, when she was 22, she took on the role of Doctor Who companion Mel, who travelled in the TARDIS with both the sixth (Colin Baker) and seventh (Sylvester McCoy) Doctors.
She returned to the role for the 2022 special The Power of the Doctor, alongside Jodie Whittaker’s 13th Doctor, and is also back, 37 years after she first appeared in the series, as Mel once more for the two-part finale of the current season of Doctor Who, starring Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor.
"You know, in light of Doctor Who, you just cannot predict anything,” Bonnie said to Radio Times about a potential return to EastEnders. “Because if someone had said to me 37 years ago, you would be playing this character again, in a different form but, you know, that will be essentially her in 37 years, I would have laughed and gone, 'Are you kidding me? No.'”
