Former EastEnders star Ben Hardy has explained why he decided to leave the BBC soap.
Hardy began playing Ian Beale's son Peter back in 2013 before leaving the show just 18 months later, since going on to star in Hollywood blockbusters such as X-Men: Apocalypse and Bohemian Rhapsody.
The actor opened up about the role during a recent interview with Deadline, where he admitted that it left him feeling "unfulfilled" at times.
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"You’re trying to make it the best it can be, but it can leave you feeling a little bit unfulfilled because the nature of the beast is they have to produce so much material in such a short space of time. So things do feel a little bit rushed," he explained.
Hardy continued: "For me anyway, personally, I reached a point where I felt myself starting to not try to make the best version of something. I found myself going, 'That’ll do.' Then as soon as that started to enter my mind, I was like, 'I need to get out of here'."
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While Hardy noted that this is not the case for every actor on the show, he admitted to feeling "quite downtrodden" himself.
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"It wasn’t getting to a place where I wanted to be. I was starting to give up, and I was like, 'I can’t do that'," he added.
Despite this, the actor did describe EastEnders as his "screen education," adding: "I felt much more comfortable going to work on films, having had that day-in/day-out training of just all the technical stuff you don’t want to be thinking about on set."
EastEnders airs on Mondays - Thursdays at 7.30pm on BBC One. The show also streams on BBC iPlayer.
