Trevor Morgan is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by Alex Ferns. He first made a two-episode stint on 21 and 26 December 2000 before reappearing as a regular cast member and gradually the show's main antagonist from 17 April 2001 to his last appearance on 1 November 2002.
The character was introduced as the estranged husband of Little Mo Slater (Kacey Ainsworth), whom he had domestically abused and mistreated throughout most of his duration on the series. This escalates up to the point where he rapes Little Mo and, after attempting to do so again on New Year's Eve 2001, ends up having her wrongfully imprisoned for attacking him with an iron in self-defense that night. During that time, Trevor frequently clashes with Little Mo's family and proceeds to spark a feud with both her sister Kat (Jessie Wallace) and love interest Billy Mitchell (Perry Fenwick). After Trevor is set up into having Little Mo released from prison, his story arc concludes with the character attempting to kill his ex-wife and son Sean by setting fire to their house on Halloween Night 2002; however, they are rescued by their neighbour Tom Banks (Colm Ó Maonlaí) and Trevor is consequently killed alongside Tom when the building explodes.
Contents
Development
In her book Media and violence: gendering the debates, Karen Boyle states that Trevor's introduction to EastEnders follows a theme in British soap operas whereby abusive characters are never completely integrated into the soap community. Trevor's first appearance in EastEnders occurs months after the introduction of the core Slater family, and he is never given a permanent home on Albert Square. Boyle observes that Trevor's status as an outsider means that he is also expelled from the community with relative ease, and that there is "a whiff of divine justice" about his eventual death. In Social issues in television fiction, Lesley Henderson furthers the assessment of Trevor as an outsider with the observation that he was one of very few Scottish characters in the soap's history, and the sole Scottish character at the time.
Ferns was surprised by the storyline which saw Trevor rape Little Mo, opining that EastEnders's executive producer John Yorke "really put his neck on the line by doing it." He found the rape and Christmas attack the most difficult scenes of his career, but found Trevor easier to play as he gained a better psychological understanding of the character. Ainsworth found the Christmas scenes equally difficult, and told Cosmopolitan magazine: "Even though I'm an actress, at that point when I was on the floor, I felt totally and utterly humiliated and sick. I felt Little Mo's degradation at having her head shoved into a plate of food. What was more frightening was I knew this scene could have been real, that it's all part of the power game these men play to make women feel as if they're worthless." At one time, Ferns considered leaving the acting profession to become a counsellor, but felt that he was prevented from doing so by Trevor's high profile, explaining: "It's difficult enough for people who are grieving without Trevor walking in."
Storylines
Trevor Morgan first arrived in Albert Square, Walford, along with his wife Little Mo Slater (Kacey Ainsworth) in December 2000 to celebrate Christmas with her family, three months after they had moved there. They were getting back together at this time, as she had previously left him after he had beaten her.
Trevor promises to cease his violence towards her, but it isn’t long before he is beating and humiliating her again. By September 2001, he and Little Mo are living in the B&B in Albert Square. He is regularly apologetic after attacking her but continues to isolate her from her family; with her sister Kat (Jessie Wallace) being particularly resentful over the situation.
After months of talk about Trevor's treatment of Little Mo, he is finally seeing being violent towards her in October 2001 – after suspecting that there was friction within Little Mo's family and she refused to tell him what was happening. He then burnt her with an iron, and a few days later managed to intimidate her into admitting that Kat's younger sister Zoe (Michelle Ryan) was actually her daughter – as a result of Kat being sexually abused by their uncle Harry Slater (Michael Elphick) when she was a teenager. When Trevor discovers Little Mo plans to join Kat in helping their sister Lynne Hobbs (Elaine Lordan) celebrate her wedding in late 2001, even though she agreed not to do that on his behalf earlier on, he rapes her as a punishment. When she arrives late for Christmas dinner, he pushes her face into her plate and forces her to eat the remains from the carpet. Hours later, he beats Little Mo up after discovering her contraceptive pills, which she had secretly been taking in order to avoid becoming pregnant by him.
Little Mo's family constantly implore her to leave her husband, despising his treatment of her. Trevor frequently rows with Kat and is attacked by her father Charlie (Derek Martin) in front a packed pub when he learns that Trevor burned Little Mo's hand with an iron. When Little Mo finally leaves Trevor just after Christmas 2001, when she discovers he deleted a message from a runaway Zoe, he tries to win her back. She resists and he becomes violent, attempting to rape her again. Little Mo hits Trevor over the head with an iron in self-defence, knocking him unconscious. Little Mo believes she has killed him, but when she and her family return to dispose of Trevor's body, they find out he has gone. Trevor is revealed to have survived the attack and left the house where he soon lost consciousness and collapsed, and was admitted to a hospital. When he recovers, he reports Little Mo to the police and has her charged with attempted murder, although she is released on bail until the trial in April 2002.
Reception
Ferns won six awards for his portrayal of Trevor, and was nominated for a further four. In 2002, he was named Most Hated Soap Villain by readers of What's On TV magazine, with 21% of the votes. He won Best Newcomer and Villain of the Year at the 2002 British Soap Awards, Best Actor at the 2002 Inside Soap Awards, and both Best Soap Newcomer and Best Soap Storyline for Trevor's abuse of Little Mo at the 2002 TV Quick and TV Choice Awards. He was also nominated for Most Popular Actor at the 2002 National Television Awards, and Best Actor, Villain of the Year and Best Storyline, again for Trevor's abuse of Little Mo, at the 2003 British Soap Awards. Karen Price of the Western Mail wrote in 2008 that Ferns as Trevor had "some of the most dramatic scenes in the history of EastEnders". The domestic abuse storyline received critical commendation for its "sensitive account" of sexual violence, however was also condemned for "symbolising the descent of popular television into distressing and inappropriate material." Boyle gave the storyline a mixed review, writing that Little Mo's attempted murder conviction served to highlight the inequities of the legal system, yet undermined "the more mundane, persistent realities of domestic violence that the soap – patterned on repetition and the deferral of closure – is otherwise well positioned to deal with." In 2012, Digital Spy listed Trevor as one of the "scariest TV characters of all time", saying he "gave plenty of soaps fans nightmares."
The episode in which Trevor attacked Little Mo over Christmas dinner was watched by 14.5 million viewers, and voted 57th in Channel 4's 100 Greatest Scary Moments. The storyline attracted so many complaints from the public that the Broadcasting Standards Commission undertook their first study of sex and violence in soap operas in twenty years. The Commission ruled that the Christmas episode, as well as the New Year's Eve 2001 episode in which Little Mo retaliated by attacking Trevor with an iron, should not have been broadcast before the 9 pm watershed. It was felt that the latter episode had a "stark and graphic quality unsuitable for pre-watershed transmission", and while the BSC stated that scenes of domestic abuse were permissible, there were "concern[s] about the intense, disturbing and protracted nature of the scenes portraying Trevor's attacks on Mo". A spokesperson for the BBC defended the scenes as "developments in well-established storylines". They claimed the depiction of abuse was consistent for the series, and that EastEnders viewers expected that seasonal episodes such as Christmas and New Year would always be "overshadowed by crises".
Ferns received a death threat whilst working on EastEnders, believed by police to have been sent from a "crazed fan". He was told to take extra security precautions, including leaving the EastEnders set via the back exit, and not travelling alone. Ferns was surprised by the strength of reactions to his role, and assessed that it was because of the domestic abuse: "You can have violence on screen and it's kind of an everyday thing but there's something about a man hitting a woman, within the confines of their own home, that people find hard to take." The aggression directed at him by members of the public intensified following Little Mo's imprisonment, forcing Ferns to wear a disguise when travelling on the London Underground. In 2008, All About Soap included Trevor and Little Mo's domestic violence plot in their list of "top ten taboo" storylines of all time. Their writer described it as one of the "taboos which have bravely been broken by soaps."