EastEnders star Richard Blackwood had 'nightmares' over Celebrity Masterchef

Richard Blackwood had "nightmares" over 'Celebrity Masterchef.'

The 50-year-old soap star is part of the lineup for the celebrity edition of the BBC One cookery show alongside the likes of 'Birds of a Feather' star Lesley Joseph and drag queen Kitty Scott-Claus and ended up having "sleepless nights" over the prospect of creating "inedible food."

He said:"You never would have thought that cooking food could turn into a nightmare, but it really does. It’s tough. You have sleepless nights, dreaming about dishes that you’ve made or that you want to make. Then whatever the food was, it wasn’t even edible. It was like literally, you just don’t stop thinking about food."

The 'Hollyoaks' actor - who is also known for having played the role of Vincent Hubbard on BBC soap 'EastEnders' - went on to explain that when he was first approached to take part in the series, he was "apprehensive" but decided that the opportunity was a "rite of passage."

He told The Mirror Online: "When they asked me to do it, I said yes apprehensively. It felt like doing it was like a rite of passage. I was trying to cook a lot more before during the show once I knew I was doing it.

"But I guess, preparing for 'MasterChef' is like preparing for a quiz where it is general knowledge questions; you don’t know where they going to go. No matter how much you might study geography, or you might study history, they might go there, well, the special subject is horror movies."

Meanwhile, Richard - who has starred as Felix Westwood on 'Hollyoaks' since 2020 - joked that he has played a "villain" in both soap operas even though in real life he is the "funny guy."

He said: ""I played the villain in EastEnders, and I play a villain Hollyoaks. But you know, anybody that knows me, I’m the funny guy, I’m the one that makes everybody laugh. Even on set, we making the other actors laugh when it’s time for them to be dead serious. There’s a buzz in that there’s something quite gratifying and seeing you play a character that’s so the opposite of you had people then start to even ask you, ‘are you like that?’"