Richard Blackwood wishes his EastEnders exit storyline had been handled better
Actor Richard Blackwood played Vincent Hubbard in EastEnders from 2015 until 2018, and he believes that the BBC soap's viewers should not have had to wait three years to find out that Vincent had died.
Richard Blackwood thinks EastEnders' viewers should not have had to wait three years to find out Vincent Hubbard had died.
The 52-year-old actor's character left Albert Square under mysterious circumstances in 2018, when Vincent fell into a trap set up by hard man Phil Mitchell (Steve McFadden), crime boss Aidan Maguire (Patrick Bergin) and corrupt cop DCI Alsworth (Nik Drake).
Viewers last saw Vincent in the back of a car and held at gunpoint by DCI Alsworth, who was seemingly about to kill him before the pair drove out of Walford together in the vehicle.
After three years of fans desperately wanting to find out if Vincent was dead or alive, in 2021, they eventually found out that he had been killed by Aidan's henchmen in 2018.
Asked at the 2025 Best Heroes Awards, sponsored by DFS, if EastEnders' then-writers could have handled Vincent's exit storyline better, Richard exclusively told BANG Showbiz: "I think more for the audience. I’m thick-skinned, I’m OK with the decisions they made. I have no bad blood with EastEnders.
"But the audience, because I hear the audience always say, ‘Is Vincent coming back?’ And I always say, ‘I don’t know.’ So I think more for the audience than myself."
After Vincent - who was married to Kim Fox (Tameka Empson) - arrived in Albert Square in 2015, he had many dramatic storylines.
This includes his foster sister Donna Yates' (Lisa Hammond's) asking him to be the father of her child as a donor - but after several attempts, she never fell pregnant - and it sparked a complicated situation with Kim and her family.
Even though Vincent is dead, Richard - who was in a place where he did not know how much more he could get out of his character at the time EastEnders' then-bosses decided to stop the character in 2018 - has suggested the idea of his alter ego being alive to make a shock return to Albert Square one day.
He said: "I watch it, and I go, ‘Maybe one day, Vincent will come back in there.’
"I would never say never."
