Michelle Ryan appeared on EastEnders for just ELEVEN MINUTES in two months before shock on-screen death

MICHELLE Ryan’s anticipated EastEnders exit storyline saw the star feature on screen for just ELEVEN minutes, The Sun can reveal. The actress, 42, sensationally quit the show just a year after her much-panned comeback. Michelle Ryan’s Zoe Slater has barely had any screen time on EastEnders Credit: BBC Michelle first joined EastEnders in 2000 Credit: BBC But despite claiming the storyline – which saw Zoe steal her dad Charlie’s old cab, fall on a brick and later die alone in bed – was planned out – Michelle’s character Zoe disappeared entirely from screens on July 17 and only returned this week on September 7, just four episodes before her on-screen death. And The Sun can reveal that her entire exit storyline has seen Michelle appear on screen for a total of ELEVEN minutes. Sign up for the Eastenders newsletter Thank you! Her death saw her appear in just three minutes of screentime in today’s episode. And in fact she’s appeared in just 39 episodes this year, despite her apparently carefully planned exit storyline. Her character made a surprise comeback last year Credit: Getty But she has barely been on screen and is now getting killed off Credit: PA As well as this, Zoe’s entire exit storyline saw her have just one conversation with her daughter Jasmine – and not acknowledge son Josh at all. A source said: “It’s all been a bit of a disaster, but even to kill off a character like Zoe in such a small amount of screen time is unthinkable. It’s not even been the main story of the week. It seems so rushed and messy.” Michelle originally played the role of Zoe in EastEnders between 2000 and 2005, and last year she made an epic return. But now she has been axed just a year after her long-awaited comeback. Most read in TV Last month, The Sun exclusively revealed that her alter-ego would die in one of the ‘blandest’ deaths in the BBC soap’s history. The soap star has since admitted that this was always what she had planned. Speaking with Radio Times, Michelle recently said: “My agent and I sort of discussed from the outset that it would be a year, and I think that when we came to look at where Zoe was going, it just seemed like a natural conclusion for her to die, because for her to run away again would have gone against everything she’d fought for; for her children. “So as sad as it was to hear that Zoe was going to be killed off, I was like, ‘I completely understand that’. “And I’d always felt that I would be going back for a year because I really do like the variety I have with my career and playing different parts.” Comment now