A decade on from leaving EastEnders, a former star of the soap has landed a lead role in the big-budget X-Files reboot.

Written and directed by Sinners Oscar-winner Ryan Coogler, Himesh Patel has been lined-up to star in the glitzy pilot – picked up by Hulu – alongside Danielle Deadwyler.

Patel, 35, quit Albert Square in 2016 after playing Tamwar Masood since 2007; he auditioned the day he sat his final GCSE exam.

During his time on EastEnders, he won an Inside Soap Award for best wedding with co-star Meryl Fernandes and also co-wrote an episode of spin-off EastEnders: E20, which he also starred in.

For The X-Files, he has stepped into the lead male role but is taking on a brand-new character alongside Deadwyler, rather than them playing Fox Mulder and Dana Scully again, as previously portrayed by David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson.

The new show’s official description reads: ‘Two highly decorated but vastly different FBI agents form an unlikely bond when they are assigned to a long-shuttered division devoted to cases involving unexplained phenomena.’

This premise differs slightly from the original show, which debuted in 1993, as Anderson’s Scully was assigned to debunk the work of extraterrestrial believer Mulder.

It initially ran for nine seasons and spawned two spin-off movies, the most recent of which was 2008’s The X-Files: I Want to Believe, released six years after the show ended.

Anderson and Duchovny then later returned for a six-episode tenth season in 2016.

The Crown and The Fall star Anderson also hinted at a possible return when she divulged to a journalist, as per The Hollywood Reporter, that she had read the new script from Coogler, urging fans to ‘have an open mind and give it a chance because it’s going to be f**king cool’.

While Coogler is writing and directing the pilot episode, fresh off the back of his Academy Award win for best original screenplay, Jennifer Yale will serve as showrunner.

The Black Panther filmmaker will also serve as excutive producer alongside his Sev Ohanian and wife Zinzi Coogler, his partners at Proximity Media, and The X-Files’ original creator and showrunner Chris Carter.

Deadwyler, who was Bafta-nominated for her turn in the film Till, previously worked with Patel on the 2021 post-apocalyptic HBO miniseries Station Eleven, for which he picked up an Emmy Award nomination for playing the conscientious Jeevan Chaudhary

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