Don Gilet is British television's reliable man of two faces: the preacher who turns out to be a killer, the detective who does not fit where he has been sent. He is better than the parts the cinema has so far found for him.
Fi1m perspective
Put Don Gilet in a dog collar and an audience now waits for the other thing. That is the work of Lucas Johnson, the preacher-turned-serial-killer he first played in EastEnders in 2008 and has been asked back to play in 2016, in 2020 and again in 2024, which tells you how useful the character is to the programme and how hard he would be to replace. Lucas is the part most people know him for, and it set the pattern. Gilet is cast where a man's good side and his bad side share a face, and he is trusted to keep both in view at once.
It was not where he started. He trained at Mountview and spent the 1990s in the places British actors learn the job, Desmond's and The Bill among them, before Babyfather (2001) gave him a lead, Johnny Lindo, opposite Diane Parish. 55 Degrees North (2004) then made him a detective, DS Nicky Cole, the first of his policemen who do not fit where they have been sent. By his own account he was broke when EastEnders came along and felt that he and the business were parting ways. The years after Lucas were steady rather than starry: Holby City, guest turns in Doctor Who, Midsomer Murders, Shetland and Sherwood. Then, at the end of 2024, Death in Paradise handed him the lead, DI Mervin Wilson, and he was a fish out of water again.
The detectives are where his plainness pays. He plays authority without decoration, and the complaint that greeted Mervin, that he was abrasive and grumpy, sounds to us like the brief rather than a failing; a man written to be out of place ought to be a little hard to like at first. Parish is the collaborator worth noting, since she has now been across the table from him twice, in Babyfather and in the Square, and both parts needed someone who could take what he was giving.
The cinema has given him less. In The Beekeeper (2024) he is the FBI's Deputy Director Prigg, which means he and Minnie Driver mostly frown at telephones while Jason Statham gets on with the plot. We found it mildly maddening. Here was an actor whose whole television life rests on being two things at once, handed a part that asked him to be one thing, and that thing worried. Jeremy Irons gets the film's good speech; Gilet gets the handset. Nobody is to blame, but it is a waste, and we noticed it.
Start with Lucas, if you want to know what he is for. The detective is the day job; the preacher is the reason he has it.
Biography
Don Gilet is a British actor. He was born in Walsall, England, and trained at the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts.
He is known for playing Lucas Johnson in the BBC soap opera EastEnders (2008–2010, 2016, 2020–2021, 2024), Jesse Law in Holby City (2014–2016), and DI Mervin Wilson in Death in Paradise (2024–). In 2024 he appeared in the film The Beekeeper as Deputy Director Prigg. He has also had roles in series including 55 Degrees North, The Loch and Sherwood.
