Harry Reid is grateful for his theatre role "freshening [him] up" after starring in ‘EastEnders’ for four years.
The 25-year-old star has played Ben Mitchell since 2014 but departed Walford earlier this year and landed the role of Leonard Vole in Agatha Christie’s ‘Witness for the Prosecution’, and he admits treading the boards has been a "great change" from learning daily soap scripts.
He exclusively told BANG Showbiz: "It’s been a great change for me, really great. Freshened me up, taught me new skills. I’ll take these skills I’ve learnt here into TV, I won’t just disregard them.
"I took skills from ‘EastEnders’ into this."
Harry was conscious about ensuring his ‘Witness’ character looked completely different from Ben, and he has found it "a lot easier" to make his new alter-ego’s story "humane" in contrast to the Albert Square resident’s "difficult" life.
He added: "It’s an interesting comparison between the two. It’s hard to follow one straight journey with Ben.
"He is very schizophrenic, in terms of his emotions. He’d suddenly just switch like that, and that’s because of the broken boy he is.
"Leonard has a journey, and it’s a lot easier to follow and make it humane. Ben was difficult because he would just jump.
"He was mourning the death of Paul and then he went and met the ‘EastEnders’ version of Grindr and a lot of people would say, ‘You b*****d.’ But that’s because he’s hurt and he doesn’t know how to deal with that.
"There’s much more of a journey that I can map with Leonard and he’s much stronger than Ben.
"I’ve tried to completely take his look away from Ben from my own personal thing as well."
‘Witness for the Prosecution’ runs at London’s County Hall.
Harry Reid grateful for ‘fresh’ theatre role
