Where Paul Trueman star Gary Beadle is now - from famous son to controversial exit
Actor Gary Beadle joined EastEnders back in 2001 as Paul Trueman, the bad boy son of Patrick (Rudolph Walker) and Audrey (Corinne Skinner-Carter), and departed from the soap - with Paul dying off screen - in December 2004. Twenty years later, in the episode on Monday 23 December, Patrick’s ex-wife Yolande reminds Patrick of the anniversary of his son’s death, which fans will remember as a classic EastEnders departure in a taxi, but with a twist.
Paul’s tragic fate began when he started dealing drugs for crime boss Andy Hunter in Albert Square. When he was arrested by police, they convinced Paul to inform on Hunter to avoid a prison sentence, but from then on his days were numbered. Hunter realised Paul was the one to grass him up to the police, and decided to have him killed. Paul considered running but realised he would put his family in danger, so instead he waited for the inevitable – a taxi to take him away from the Square, that was driven by the hitman sent to kill him.
At the time of Paul’s departure, actor Gary Beadle was not thrilled with the exit storyline his character had been given. He told the Mirror at the time: "I hate the storyline, I'm really not happy about it. It's so unimaginative, full of stereotypes - black people and drugs, blah, blah, blah. Any scenes involving drugs, you can rest assured I hated filming them. I just knew Paul wouldn't do that - it's not his style. Once they started hanging my character so dramatically, I knew I'd made the right decision to leave."
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Some EastEnders cast members have struggled to find work after they leave the soap, but in an interview with The Guardian in 2020, Gary explained that made him more determined to succeed. “When I walked away from EastEnders, they weren’t happy about it but I wanted to move on. The test was, ‘Can you do EastEnders and then work again afterwards?’ Apparently, everyone who does it never works again. I liked the odds on that. I thought, ‘Let’s see if I can pull it off.’”
Following his time on the soap, the 59 year old actor worked at the National Theatre, the Almeida and Royal Court theatres in various acclaimed productions, and appeared in TV series including Hustle, Patrick Melrose, Grantchester and Silent Witness.
More recently, he co-starred in the hit romantic comedy Rye Lane, in the Mangrove episode of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology, as Clem Andor in the Star Wars series Andor and in the hit series The Wheel Of Time, The Gentlemen and A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder.
The star, who originally had dreams of being a hip-hop artist and even supported Run DMC on tour with his group, City Limits Crew, also has a well-known son, Louis Rei, who is part of the hip-hop collective WSTRN. “That’s my son, I’m proud of him,” Gary told The Guardian. “I can’t cramp his style, baby. I just watch from afar and think, ‘God, that’s what I wanted to do.’”
