EastEnders star Balvinder Sopal has revealed she feared she was being axed from the BBC One soap when Strictly Come Dancing producers came calling.

The actress, 46, has played Suki Panesar-Unwin since January 2020 and during that time has been at the centre of several huge storylines.

Over the last year alone, poor Suki was dragged off a balcony by wicked ex-husband Nish Panesar (Navin Chowdhry) – just moments after discovering he’d poisoned her new wife Eve (Heather Peace).

In the aftermath her family’s fortune has been at risk, with Bernie Taylor (Clair Norris) scamming the clan out of thousands.

More recently, viewers have seen Suki plead with step-granddaughter Avani Nandra-Hart (Aaliyah James) not to terminate her pregnancy so that she could raise the child as her own.

In the aftermath, every single member of her family cut her off – and those relationships have yet to be fully repaired.

Now, Balvinder is swapping the Square for the ballroom in the latest series of Strictly.

Balvinder takes to the dancefloor

Bal’ is partnered with newcomer professional dancer Julian Caillon on the smash-hit Saturday night competition.

‘I can’t stop butterflies. Every time I think about it, they just go,’ she explained in an interview with Good Morning Britain.

In a separate press release she added: ‘I’ve dabbled [with dance] a little bit. I did ballroom and Latin as a kind of hobby, and I really love it. And I think when you’ve got a passion for something, you’re naturally kind of inclined to enjoy it.

‘I don’t know if I’ll be any good! It is about telling the story with your feet, with your body, and not speaking.’

She continued: ‘So, you know, I won’t have to learn any lines, which would be great, but it’ll be like learning a new language, I think.’

Strictly’s interest sparked axe fears in Balvinder

In a chat with BBC Radio Sheffield, Bal’ admitted that she was wanting a ‘conversation for quite some time’ regarding signing up to Strictly, though when it actually happened, she got quite the surprise.

Strictly bosses had gone to EastEnders to broach the idea, though when the soap’s Executive Producer Ben Wadey called her in for a chat about it, she feared that was the end of Suki.

‘So I was away at a spa weekend in Harrogate, and it was lovely, and we were trying to get a conversation for quite some time, and then Ben had to go away on holiday, so they were like, “we really need to get this conversation in before Ben goes away on holiday”.’, she said.

‘Then my heart dropped and I was like, “oh no”.’

‘Ben starts the conversation with “so Bal, how are you feeling, you all right?” and I said “yeah, I’m grand, I’m grand”.

‘He says: “Look, Suki is a brilliant character, the audience love her, you’ve done really well with her, we love her she’s just been great”.

‘And I’m like “no, no, no, no. Please don’t”. And he went: “And you know, Strictly” and I went “yes, yes, yes”.’

Phew.

After getting the daunting chat out of the way, her agent then set the ball rolling to get her in the ballroom.

The judge’s scores are in

Last week, Balvinder and Julian performed the samba to (Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty by KC and the Sunshine Band, earning a somewhat respectable score of 17 from the judges.

This is week one, so everything could change.

It’s still all to play for ahead of the first dance-off this weekend, where the pair will strut their stuff in a Charleston to Meghan Trainor and T-Pain’s Been Like This.