Ben Hardy has gone into detail about why he left EastEnders.

The actor played Peter Beale on the BBC One and iPlayer soap between 2013 and 2015, before making his departure.

Since then, he managed to find big-screen success, landing roles in X-Men: Apocalypse, Bohemian Rhapsody, and in the streaming service films The Voyeurs and 6 Underground.

In an interview with The Independent to promote his new film Unicorns, Hardy explained that he felt he was becoming “lazy” working on just one project.

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“I had been battling it for a year, how to make things work. I have so much respect for everyone who works on that show [but] I felt myself getting lazy as an actor,” he said.

“I felt myself constantly going, ‘This scene doesn’t work,’ like I was trying to make a diamond out of something that can’t be a diamond. That laziness scared me. I [said], ‘I have to get out of here.'”

Despite successfully pursuing a career in which he does lots of different projects, Hardy did admit to longing for the familiar – and familial – experience of soap life.

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“I’m envious of people who have a work family,” he explained. “There are times I’m frustrated or not getting a job I want, and I’m like, ‘Man, if I was just in EastEnders…'”

With Hardy away in Hollywood, the role of Peter Beale has been recast twice since his departure.

Dayle Hudson portrayed the character between 2020 and 2022 before Thomas Law, who had played the character before Hardy, came back last year to play Peter once again – and is still playing him to this day.