One star of Coronation Street has revealed that bosses told her that there were initially plans for her to kill her off when she signed on to appear in the soap last year
Pauline McLynn was told by Coronation Street bosses that there were plans for her to be killed off when she first joined the soap.
The actress, 69, who is best known her her role as Mrs Doyle on classic sitcom Father Ted, arrived on the world’s longest-running TV soap towards the end of last year as the Irish matriarch who had bought the Rovers Return Inn.
It was established early on that Maggie had a dark past and a flashback set in Ireland revealed she had been responsible for the death of her husband Alan, pushing him down the stairs in an argument all those decades ago, witnessed by their son Finlay.
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In a radical format change, bosses decided to air a flashforward earlier this year that confirmed that either Maggie, or one of her fellow villains – Carl Webster (Jonathan Howard), Theo Silverton (James Cartwright), Megan Walsh (Beth Nixon), Jodie Ramsey (Olivia Frances Brown) would be killed off in scenes that are playing out this week, with each episode detailing the same day’s events but from each character’s point of view.
Asked how she feels about playing one of the soap’s many antagonists, Pauline said: “It’s nearly the biggest compliment I’ve been paid for a long time! I’m not interested in nice people. I far prefer to be a villain.” The star then revealed that she was told early on that Maggie would not be leaving the soap alive.
She added: “I will say this, when I joined the show, I was told that the plan for the character was to kill her. So we shall see! I think you’ll find when you watch all of the five stories that it’s very possible more than one person is dead, that’s another thing I will say.
“And the third thing, is that the wonderful [producer] Kate Brooks said to me once, you’re going to get a set of scripts and it looks like you’re dead – and you might be. I just wanted to warn you! We don’t know.”
Pauline then teased that it could indeed seem like Maggie is the victim in question by the end of the week, but warned fans to not be so sure.
She added: “I do seem very dead at the end of the week. Assume nothing. You might be being fed one thing which is true, but it could be more than one. It’s also brilliantly clear that any one of the five could be a killer, whether or not they’ve killed the person you believe to be dead or not. It’s brilliantly seeded in. There is a justice in Coronation Street, if you do a crime, you have to pay the price.”
Coronation Street boss Kate Brooks said of the big week: “It was a very complicated storylining process! I did lose a bit of sleep and my hair went a little bit greyer. Usually in a murder week you’ve got one victim, then the suspects – we had five potential suspects had to make sure all the stories aligned, made sense and they were all getting to the right place and coming together.
In the build-up it’s gearing up and the momentum is really strong, it could be any of them. Stars aligned to get to this juicy week. The flipside is going forward, there’s so many consequences for each individual character.
Then we’ve also got the who did it, that big story as well going forward as well as unpacking what’s going on with all those other characters. Very complex, but satisfying and enjoyable as well.”
Coronation Street airs weeknights at 8:30pm on ITV1 and ITV X.
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