Michelle Collins has praised EastEnders producers for coming up with a "kind of genius" way for her character Cindy Beale to return to the soap.
Despite having supposedly died during child birth in prison 25 years ago, last week Cindy was revealed to be alive and well and living in France, having recently reunited with her ex-husband Ian (Adam Woodyatt).
In Thursday's episode Cindy learned that she would now be free to leave the Witness Protection Programme, which she had been part of since 1998 after seeing an incident involving her old cellmate Jackie Ford, who has now died.
During her decades away it emerged that Cindy had enjoyed a whole different life under the identity 'Rose Knight', marrying George Knight (Colin Salmon) and having two daughters by him.
Speaking to press at a screening of Cindy's comeback episodes, Collins said: "I am a podcast addict. I love podcasts. I listen to them all the time and I listened to a lot about witness protection and actually, it's not that far off.
"There are stories where people do things like this, and they completely go away and have these, kind of, completely different identities. So it's kind of feasible. I mean, I don't want to give kind of too much away."
She added: "I always remember saying things the only way they could do it was with witness protection.
"Where was she, where has she been? What has she been doing these last kind of years? But it's kind of genius. The way it's all been put together."
EastEnders continues Mondays to Thursdays at 7.30pm on BBC One and from 6am on iPlayer.
Neil Wilkes
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