Former EastEnders legend Danny Dyer revealed he suffered a serious ‘panic attack’ after a drug-fuelled night out.
The Mick Carter actor, 46, said he ‘didn’t have a clue what to say’ on stage while playing a waiter in the British playwright’s Celebration in 2001.
While on theHow To Fail With Elizabeth Day podcast he had ‘smoked crack’ the night before because it was his first time in New York and he was ‘very excited.’
He said: ‘I take it very seriously, my work, and I love it, and I strive to be better every night and I’d never got in a situation… I’d heard about people that had dried on stage because it’s a massive thing and all that, and it never happened to me.
‘Anyway, I thought that I could sit up all night, smoking crack, and then walk on stage, and of course, you can’t f****** do that, it’s a ridiculous idea.’
Hailing the experience a ‘wake-up call,’ the actor admitted he ‘never had that feeling before.’
Danny added: ‘I loved showing off and then all of a sudden… my lips started to go because I was going to cry.’
Danny, who played Mick Carter on the BBC soap, left the role in 2022. In dramatic Christmas Day scenes, the character went missing at sea after jumping in to save Linda Carter (Kellie Bright).
Now, he is starring as Lee in new Sky Max comedy series Mr Bigstuff, alongside the show’s writer, Ryan Sampson, who is taking on the role of Glen.
Danny and Ryan recently sat down with Metro.co.uk to tell us all about the show, and how the stars aligned for Danny to take on the role.
‘I wrote Lee for Danny,’ Ryan revealed – but things didn’t go totally to plan at first, as he explained.
‘I poured myself into it, furiously writing it, gave it to a producer and he was like, “Yeah, it’s good and everything, but do you realise that Danny is in EastEnders for the foreseeable future? What have you done? You’ve wasted your time.” And I genuinely had not realised that had happened.
‘I was talking to my friends about it, they commiserated me, we went on a big old night out, and I came home in the morning. And on the very morning of me leaving this night, I drunkenly went past a newsagents and on the front of the Daily Express was “Dyer quits ‘Enders”.
Danny went on to explain why he really made the decision to leave the soap after 9 years.
‘I was coming to the end of my run, I had a wonderful time there, but I felt I needed to go out and try some other stuff, if there’s any other stuff out there – nothing was guaranteed – and this script landed on my lap. It really confirmed to me why I’d left.’
