Update Shocking: EastEnders actor opens up on first gay kiss with co-star in five-word response

A former EastEnders star has opened up about filming his first on-screen gay kiss.

Actor Harry Reid was the fifth actor to play Ben Mitchell, replacing Joshua Pascoe, and appeared in the BBC One soap for four years from 2014 until his departure in 2018.

During his stint as Ben, TV bosses explored the characters sexuality and he ended up meeting Johnny Carter (Sam Strike) before embarking into a same-sex relationship with Paul Coker, played by Jonny Labey, until he was killed off.

Opening up about kissing another man for the first time on-screen, Harry told Lee Salisbury on the Soap From The Box podcast: “All my mates from home will tell you this but i’m very comfortable with everything. I am straight but I did have a moment with it. We did the scene and it was the ‘duff-duff’ as well.

“For people listening, for any ‘duff-duff’ you have to hold it for 15 seconds so we’re having to snog away. I never kissed Sam so Jonny was my first kiss on-screen and I remember doing the kiss and the director said ‘cut’ and we pulled away and the geezer inside of me and I ended dup patting him on the chest and went ‘good one, Bruv’.

“It was ridiculous and I looked a right d**khead and I remember saying to Jonny, because me and Jonny became really good friends and still talk now, and I said to him ‘I’m sorry I felt a bit macho afterwards I just didn’t know what to do, mate. It was such a weird position and it was my first time. What I can say is that it never happened afterwards and I never had that feeling again afterwards.”

“There was no more chest patting. There was one actor, who I won’t say who it was, and I remember he came in to do some scenes and we were doing a rehearsal and we went in he said: ‘How do you feel about the kissing then?’. I was like ‘Just get on with it’ and he was like ‘Shall we do it now to get it out of the way?’ and it’s an unspoken rule that you do it when you do it when you record it, don’t rehearse it.”

Ben was written out of EastEnders in 2018 but was brought back by soap bosses in 2019 with Max Bowden become the sixth actor to play the character. Opening up about being replaced, Harry told Lee: “I’ve spoken openly about it. I am disappointed with how it turned out and I’ve made that very clear.”