John Paul and Jez on Hollyoaks on March 12, 2025 / Lime Pictures
James Sutton has declared that he is “done” with Hollyoaks following his exit earlier this year.
The 43-year-old had played the role of John Paul McQueen on the Channel 4 soap for an impressive 20 years but left in February as part of a storyline that saw John Paul move to Switzerland with son Matthew-Jesus.
The plot left the door open for him to return at some point in the future, but in a new interview Sutton has definitively ruled it out.
Speaking to the Marvyn Harrison podcast, he said: “I’m done, yeah, I’m done. They didn’t kill me off but I’m done. I think I’d exhausted everything that there was left to do with that character.
“The show changed a lot in the last couple of years, really sad. All financial really but a lot of cutbacks, a lot of people lost their jobs.
“It went from five episodes to three episodes which was really problematic. The way the contracts are set up on Hollyoaks, you get paid per episode so if you’ve got two less episodes a week and a huge cast…”
He added: “The direction of travel I didn’t feel was a positive one for me.”
Since leaving the show Sutton has set up his own OnlyFans account, which is believed to have earned him close to £1 million so far.
