“Phil Mitchell is the best TV villain.”

EastEnders star Natalie Cassidy has opened up about her experience working with Phil Mitchell actor Steve McFadden over the years.

Cassidy, who has played Sonia Fowler on the ITV soap since 1993, hailed McFadden’s character as the “best TV villain” during an appearance on the Off the Telly: What Shall We Watch? podcast with Joanna Page. She also shared some more insight into what it’s like working with the actor and, of course, facing off against Phil.

“I don’t care what – whoever’s listening, I don’t care what soap you’re in to but – and I know I’m biased but I think Steve McFadden, who plays Phil Mitchell, is the best TV villain,” she said.

Cassidy added that she’s actually “frightened of Phil” because McFadden is “so good at what he does”, saying: “I’m very good friends with Steve, but as soon as I step on set and Phil is there, you can’t help but not be scared of Phil.”

She continued: “He just commands respect, I feel, and he commands the room in a way that I, personally, think for me, Steve is one of the best actors I’ve worked with just because I want to be on top of it. I want to be on top of my game.

“I just want to do the best that I can when I’m around him because he’s so good. And I think Phil as a character, what he’s been through – affairs and prison and alcoholic and a heroin addict and a crack head – I just think he’s done everything.

“He’s smashed up the pub, you know, set fire to things and him and his brother Grant. But he’s just kinda stood the test of time, and I really, really think he’s brilliant, and he’s my favourite TV villain.”

Recalling one of Sonia’s “tear ups” with Phil over two decades ago and how it felt facing off against him, Cassidy said: “I’d helped Lisa, get away, run away, and Phil comes to the door and bashes the door down and is like: ‘Where’s my baby?! Where’s Lisa?! Where is she?!’

“And Sonia’s like ‘I don’t know; I don’t know’. We did all this kind of, you know, him pushing me, and it was brilliant. Screaming, I was like ‘I have made it now’. Once you’ve done a scene like that with Steve McFadden, you have made it.”