Mehmet Osman

Mehmet Osman
EastEnders character
Portrayed by	Haluk Bilginer
Created by	Tony Holland and Julia Smith
Duration	1985–89
First appearance	13 June 1985
Last appearance	23 March 1989
Classification	Former; regular
Profile
Occupation	Café owner and minicab firm owner
Family Wife Guizin Osman Father Hassan Osman Brothers Ali Osman Sisters Ayse Osman Sons Rayif Osman Murat Osman Daughters Emine Osman Uncles Ahmed Nephews Hassan Osman Little Ali Osman

Mehmet Osman is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by Haluk Bilginer. Mehmet was portrayed as a charmer, rogue and a serial womaniser, played as a recurring character until 1989.

Storylines

Mehmet was a Turkish Cypriot and the older brother of the original owner of the Bridge street café, Ali Osman. He was first seen in Albert Square in June 1985 when he came to take part in one of Ali's regular late-night poker games. Like his brother, Mehmet was a serial gambler and whenever he gambled the stakes were often foolishly high. Rather unusually for a regular character, Mehmet didn't live in Walford but Stoke Newington.

In June 1986 Mehmet and Ali started a cab firm called 'OzCabs' from a corner table in Al's Café. Mehmet was married with three children, but monogamy was one sanctity of marriage that he was more than willing to overlook. Later that month punk Mary Smith caught his eye, and so he bet his sceptical brother £10 that he could get Mary into his bed. Mary was well aware that Mehmet's intentions were dishonourable and initially refused to sleep with him, but Mehmet persisted and she finally relented and spent the night with him. A triumphant Mehmet then went to collect his winnings and gloat to his brother in the café. However, Mary overheard their entire conversation and she then set about trying to get revenge on him by hoax calling his cab-firm and vandalising his car.

Later in the year Mehmet acted as Pat Wick's pimp, setting her up with clients on a regular basis and he even persuaded Pat to convince Mary to go 'on the game' too. He also got involved in Kathy Beale's Knitting business, later conning her and disappearing with all her profits. After he got into more trouble with his customers for overcharging on fares and then trying to seduce Hannah Carpenter — the wife of his employee — the residents of Albert Square decided to confront him. Den Watts, Pete Beale and Tony Carpenter caught up with him and gave him a severe beating which involved having his arms pinned behind his back whilst taking a number of blows to the stomach. This type of beating is now widely regarded as the "Mehmet Test".

Mehmet proceeded to make things infinitely worse for himself soon after, when he staked his house and business on a bet, lost and swiftly disappeared leaving his wife, Guizin, to face up to the consequences. A then homeless Guzin arrived on Ali and his wife Sue's doorstep with the news that Mehmet had beat her and she wasn't ever returning to him. Ali and Sue were forced to take Guizin and her three children, Murat, Rayif and Emine into their one bedroom apartment.

Mehmet returned to Walford in May 1987 and he managed to persuade his long suffering wife to give their marriage another go. However, his promises to Guizin would prove to be hollow as soon after he decided that the barmaid Donna Ludlow was to be the next 'notch on his bedpost'. Donna refused his advances, but couldn't resist informing Guizin about his offer and Guizin and Donna nearly came to blows on New Year's Eve that year.

Guizin and Mehmet's marriage was highly turbulent and they were always involved in intense arguments, mainly concerning money and gambling. In 1988 Mehmet and Guzin became partners in Ali's café after Sue gave up working to look after her baby. Mehmet often clashed with his wife about the amount of time he took off to gamble and the way the café was run.

Later in the year Mehmet and Ali ran up huge gambling debts to Joanne Francis, manageress of Strokes wine bar, who was also a member of the criminal underworld known as The Firm. Desperate for money the two turned to their café employee, Ian Beale, for a loan. He agreed, but charged his employers 10 percent interest and later, when they couldn't meet the repayments, he demanded into their partnership in the café. The brothers refused, but the debt eventually led to Ali losing the café to Ian the following year.

Mehmet's marriage went through some more trouble in 1989, when Ali's wife, Sue, discovered that her husband had been sleeping with prostitute, Donna Ludlow. Sue was traumatised by this news and turned to Mehmet for comfort. Seeing her chance for revenge Sue made a pass at Mehmet, purposefully kissing him in Ali's view. For once Mehmet was innocent, but Ali refused to believe this and went berserk, which culminated in a massive fight. Ali divulged Sue and Mehmet's fabricated affair to Guzin, who was unable to forgive her husband's latest infidelity with her sister-in-law. After viciously attacking Mehmet she left Walford to return to Northern Cyprus, taking their three children with her. After another huge bust-up with Sue, Mehmet decided to cut his losses and return to Northern Cyprus in order to win his wife back. His last appearance was in March 1989.

Character creation and development

Background

Mehmet Osman was conceptualised by the creators of EastEnders, Tony Holland and Julia Smith. Mehmet, the brother of original character Ali Osman, was part of a well-intentioned attempt to represent the proportion of Turkish Cypriots who had immigrated to England and settled in the East End of London. Holland and Smith knew that for the soap to succeed there needed to be a varied group of characters, so that several different sections of the audience had someone to identify with. Additionally, if the programme was to be realistic, it had to reflect the cross-section of society that actually existed in the real location. For these reasons, different sexes, ages, classes, religions and races were all included in the original character line-up. Both Holland and Smith had been at the forefront of the move towards 'integrated casting' in television and had encountered an array of ethnic diversities in the process. Even though the ethnic minority groups were deemed the hardest to research, Holland and Smith called upon their social contacts to relay information about their own origins and lifestyles, which they say allowed them to portray Walford's most recent immigrants more realistically.^[1]

Casting

Actor Haluk Bilginer was one of only three London-based, Turkish-speaking actors available at the time of casting in 1984. He was originally put forward for the role of Ali Osman along with another actor, Nejdet Salih. Bilginer was Turkish, and Holland and Smith have commented that he "was almost type-casting for the 'peacock' they were looking for', right down to the Bandito moustache and hairy chest!" However, Salih was actually Turkish-Cypriot and had a background "surprisingly similar" to Ali's.^[1]

Holland and Smith disagreed about which actor should have the part of Ali; Holland preferred Bilginer, while Smith preferred Salih. Holland believed Bilginer possessed the right "look" and that Salih was not tall or tough-looking enough, "he didn't have the sort of physical presence that put you on your guard."^[1] He also believed that Sandy Ratcliff, the actress playing Ali's wife Sue, would have "made mincemeat of [Salih]". Additionally, Holland visioned Ali with a moustache, and unlike Bilginer, Salih was unable to grow one. Conversely, Smith felt that Salih was "the genuine article. Not Turkish, but Turkish-Cypriot. He would have so much actual knowledge to bring to the character [...] He wouldn't have to act the part, he was the part."^[1] Both actors were given a script reading with the actress who would play Ali's wife, Sandy Ratcliff, who arrived for the reading 45 minutes late. Bilginer read with Ratcliff first, and Holland and Smith have commented that he "had obviously thought about the part [...] because there was much more physical power in his performance. At one stage Julia and Tony were worried that he might even hit Sandy!"^[1] Salih read next, and after being introduced to Ratcliff who apologised for her tardiness, to which Salih replied "Not to worry. Typical bloody woman!" His quip impressed Holland and Smith; they have since commented that Salih almost got the part on the strength of that line alone, as the felt it typified the character perfectly. Salih was eventually given the part of Ali, but as there were only two suitable Turkish speaking actors available, and as Ali would need a brother, Bilginer was given the part of Mehmet Osman.^[1]

Development

Mehmet Osman made his first appearance on-screen in June 1985, 4 months after the show originally aired. His arrival coincided with a cot death storyline of Sue and Ali's baby, Hassan. Mehmet appeared as a semi-regular character from 1985–1987, setting up a cab firm named Ozcabs from inside Ali's café; however, he became a regular in 1988, when both he and his wife Guizin (Ishia Bennison) were made partners in Ali's café, which was renamed Café Osman.^[2]

Mehmet was portrayed as a charmer, a rogue and a womaniser. Author of The EastEnders Handbook, Hilary Kingsley, has said of him, "he tries it on with every woman he meets and sometimes succeeds through a combination of good looks and sheer audacity." A serial gambler, Mehmet was shown to steer Ali into various money-losing ploys, and had a combustible marriage to Guizin, who put up with his philandering, as in the Turkish community, that's "what a wife was expected to do".^[3]

Described as "the Terrible Turk", Haluk Bilginer was one of the more popular male cast members on EastEnders during the 1980s, and he reportedly received sackfuls of fan mail, "despite playing a villain and a womanising snake".^[3] Hilary Kingsley has said that what made the character so popular was Bilginer's Omar Sharif-style good looks and charm.^[3] Following the departure of Holland and Smith, Mehmet was eventually written out of the serial in May 1989, in a storyline that signified the disbandment of the Osman family. On-screen, Mehmet returned to his native Cyprus after a fight with Guizin regarding her suspicions about Mehmet's fabricated affair with Sue. The Osman family were among many characters to leave the serial that year. Writer Colin Brake has commented, "the pace of comings and going was fast and furious during 1989, as the programme tried to find a new direction."^[2] Bilginer went into musical theatre after leaving EastEnders.^[3]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Smith, Julia; Holland, Tony (1987). EastEnders - The Inside Story. Book Club Associates. ISBN 0-563-20601-2. 
2. ^ ^{a b} Brake, Colin (1995). EastEnders: The First 10 Years: A Celebration. BBC Books. ISBN 0-563-37057-2. 
3. ^ ^{a b c d} Kingsley, Hilary (1990). The EastEnders Handbook. BBC books. ISBN 0-563-206010-563-36292-8-2.