Helen Flanagan has revealed that her Corrie co-star Alison King accused soap bosses of ‘sexualising’ her, after scenes showing her character having an underage affair with her teacher.
Helen Flanagan was just nine when she joined Coronation Street as Rosie Webster – eldest daughter of Sally and Kevin. And she was 16 – a year older than her character – when Rosie was groomed by teacher John Stape, played by Graeme Hawley, who was exposed as a serial killer.
After the affair was exposed and he was sacked, Rosie was later kidnapped and held hostage by Stape. Helen, now 35, tells The Mirror: “Was it morally right that I was expected to parade about in my knickers like some mad nymphomaniac when I was still just a teenager?
“Alison King, who plays Carla Connor, once kicked off in the green room, saying how disgusting it was that they were sexualising me when I was a young girl. I didn’t fully comprehend what she was talking about at the time. I do now. I get it.
“I had to do kissing and bedroom scenes with a man a lot older than me. Obviously the actor [Graeme Hawley] was lovely, but I don’t think it would happen now. When you’re 16 you don’t really know what’s going on and I was just happy to get the big storylines. But I had scenes as Rosie which didn’t always sit comfortably with me. I felt minging post-shoot.
“Everything has changed now, which I’m glad about. They wouldn’t write it in quite the same way all these years later and since the Me Too movement.”
She compares playing Rosie to her current role as Catherine, the youngest of three sisters, in the Shelagh Stephenson play The Memory of Water, which opens today at Bolton’s Octagon Theatre. Now she has an intimacy coordinator, to make sure she is comfortable with everything. “Back then you just got on with it,” she says of her Corrie experience.
But Helen says she finds using her sexuality empowering, as long as it’s on her terms. She says: “I post sexy pictures. I work for different lingerie brands. I enjoy that. I like to feel sexy. I like to feel empowered – and in control. That’s the difference. I’ve turned up to some shoots which I didn’t know would be so ‘sexy’, thinking it would be unprofessional to object and been in tears.”
During the last few years, Helen’s life off camera has drawn more attention than her acting. Now she says her footballer ex Scott Sinclair, 36 – the father of her three children – has broken her heart all over again by deciding to sell the family home. Recently branding the former Chelsea, Manchester City and Aston Villa player a “d***head,” she says: “I’ll always love Scott, but he’s really let me down.”
The couple split in 2022, amid cheating rumours. But Helen still lives in the £1 million family house in Belmont, Bolton, with Matilda, 10, Delilah, seven, and Charlie, four.
She says: “His decision to sell the family has broken my heart. His reason for selling is financial, as he isn’t currently signed to a football club, but it makes me angry when he spends money on fancy holidays and constant trips to Dubai. Scott has other properties he could sell, too – his mother lives in a house similar to mine and yet that hasn’t been put up for sale.
“I worry about my future and my security. I have to work constantly to make ends meet. He’s the father of my kids, but their dad’s a wealthy guy, you know?”
In her debut book, Head and Heart: Break-ups, breakdowns and being Rosie, she says of Scott: “I was with him for 13 years, he was my whole 20s. We don’t speak, we don’t communicate at all. I do find it just really sad. I never wanted it to be this way.
“As a woman, I’ve had to be strong. And this is me having my voice. I’ve upset the apple cart, but why should I keep quiet? What I would want Matilda to do. I would like Matilda to have her voice.”
But Scott isn’t the only man to have broken her heart. After they split, she briefly dated former boxer David Haye and heavily denies rumours of being involved in a throuple with him and his girlfriend Sian Osbourne.
Helen, who appeared on the 2012 series of ITV’s I’m A Celebrity, and then again on the All Stars edition in 2023, met David on the show and dated him knowing he had an open relationship. She says: “He doesn’t know he’s in the book. I do think he loves Sian. And I do think he loved me. I just don’t think he really knows how to love anyone.”
Born in Bury. Greater Manchester, Helen, who joined Corrie in 2000, leaving in 2012, returning briefly from 2017 to 2018, says of her soap years: “I’m a very normal, northern working-class girl, so Coronation Street really changed the circumstances of my life.”
And she is not ruling out going back. Currently single, she adds: “I’m focusing on being an actress without any noise getting in the way. I’d love to do more TV, a drama or something on Netflix.” Reflecting on her 2017 Coronation Street stint, she continues: “The first time [on Corrie] I was always getting the main storylines. Returning and not kind of getting those was tough. But I’d love to return at some point.”
Helen left because of a mental health crisis and eating disorder, which saw her “self-harm by scratching” and “surviving on cups of powdered soup”. But she does not blame Corrie, adding: “It would have happened to me no matter what job I was doing.”
Open about her diagnoses of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD and premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), she has also suffered suicidal idealtion and intrusive thoughts. And in January 2024, she suffered a terrifying breakdown after an adverse reaction to her prescription OCD medication.
She says: “It was the worst time that I’ve ever struggled with my mental health. I do think the medication was really bad for me, but I became quite addicted to it.” It came at a time when her relationship with Scott was also tricky and she was working full blast, as well as being a single mum.
She says: “He really wasn’t playing fair. So I had quite a lot of financial stuff going on as well and the stress of solicitors. I was also totally heartbroken after David Haye. It just all became too much and I began to experience psychosis. I thought I was being watched, filmed, hunted, possibly even drugged, I was seeing things that weren’t there. It was really frightening – I thought my kids were going to be taken away, the nursery got involved.”
Supported by her parents and therapists, she spent months rebuilding herself and started writing her book. She says: “I probably won’t read it. I’d only over analyse it. I don’t think Scott will read it either… but he might hear about some of the things I have to say.”
She hopes her book will help others who are struggling with their mental health. She says: “When you talk about mental health, it saves people’s lives. And it makes you feel less on your own.” No longer taking medication, of her own mental health struggles, she continues: “It’s not just going to go away. Sometimes your brain is wired more differently – mine is. And mental health is something that’s in my family as well.
“I have three children that are half me, so I have tried to be more educated about mental health and how to deal with it in healthy ways – because maybe one day one of my children might have some struggles. For me, healthy ways are therapy, talking and exercise. It feels like everything’s coming together now. I’ve come a long way and I’m really proud of myself. Onwards and upwards.”
The Mirror has approached Coronation Street for comment.
