EastEnders’ Sanjay star Deepak Verma unrecognisable 26 years since soap exit

Sanjay was EastEnders‘ handsome and popular market trader with an eye for the ladies and a bit of a gambling habit. Played by actor Deepak Verma, he first arrived in Albert Square with his heavily-pregnant wife Gita (Shobu Kapoor) in February 1993, after persuading a friend to give him a pitch in the market for his clothes stall.

But all wasn’t well between Sanjay and Gita Kapoor – they’d been living separately since Sanjay’s previous business had failed. And although they soon found somewhere to live together, it wasn’t before Sanjay had managed to gamble away their money for the deposit on a flat.

Not long after, their daughter Sharmilla was born. Yet what could have been a beautiful time in their lives that brought them together drove Sanjay and Gita even further apart, with Gita suffering from post-natal depression and taking a break to stay with relatives.

So when Gita returned unexpectedly, only to find Sanjay in bed with her snooty sister Meena, it was only the beginning of five years of twists and turns for the family in Walford, including Sanjay being wrongly accused of Gita’s murder.

For actor Deepak, his arrival in EastEnders at the age of 24 marked his first major TV role, following a brief appearance in the Scottish detective series Taggart in 1992.

He went on to establish his own film and television production company, Pukkanasha Films, whose mission is to develop and produce a slate of innovative, offbeat, fresh and vibrant feature films by drawing on diverse cultural backgrounds, particularly Indian and western.

Asked why he wanted to become a film producer, Deepak answered: “It was the only way to take a real grasp of my career. At first it felt like it was a bit of a mysterious land. But through my existing contacts, I delved a bit deeper and found one or two people who could help.”

In 2009, Deepak criticised his former bosses on EastEnders for the way it portrayed modern Asian families, saying the programme was “going backwards” and branding the Masood family “two-dimensional and ill-conceived.”

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Speaking to the Evening Standard, he said: “My character and Shobu [Kapoor’s] character were the first real characters on the show that were proper [Asian] people. We didn’t have accents. I just acted like a Hackney boy, like a barrow boy. We did that 15 years ago. We need to move forwards. It’s going backwards.”

Since leaving the BBC One stalwart, he has also written several stage plays and screenplays – including for BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service – and appeared in theatrical productions around the UK.

In 2017, Deepak was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the Birthday Honours list, awarded to him by then-Prince Charles, for services to the arts.

TV viewers have also been fortunate enough to get the odd glimpse or two of Deepak in acting roles, too. He appeared in episodes of EastEnders rival soap Doctors, as well as Holby City and he played a wealthy vascular surgeon in The Good Karma Hospital. In 2023, America came calling and he signed up to appear in 13 episodes of the US TV series Emergency: LA, starring as Dr Daniel Fernandez in a drama revolving LA’s emergency services.

But possibly the biggest shock to fans came when Deepak was interviewed by BBC news in April 2020, just as Covid struck.

The actor was walking along a deserted beach in Hastings, East Sussex when he was accosted by a BBC TV news crew. Speaking about the government lockdown, he said, with a theatrical wave of his arm: “It’s all just empty, it’s like The Walking Dead. All the restaurants are all closed.”

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