Shayne Ward has opened up about what it’s like being in the middle of a ‘Coronation Street’ love triangle, as viewers prepare to see Eva Price get revenge on his character Aidan Connor.
Aidan and Eva may have been loved up in the past, but when she discovers his affair with Maria Connor, Catherine Tyldesley’s on-screen alter-ego sets out to get revenge - and she’s not going to be holding back.
So how does former popstar Shayne feel about playing the man at the centre of it all? And what about that baby bombshell?
HuffPost UK caught up with him to find out what’s coming next…
Let’s start with the baby news…
Basically, he’s stunned. “When she tells him, he can’t quite believe it, but he doesn’t want her to know that he’s not happy.”
… Which comes as Aidan is ready to actually dump Eva
Eva’s pregnancy reveal will throw a spanner in the works for Aidan, who will have no idea that his partner has found out the truth about the affair.
“To me Aidan has made his choice [to be with Maria],” he said. “That is genuine, it’s not him trying to buy himself some time in case she asks him again.
“He’s made his choice, he genuinely is going to say that it’s over and that he wants to be with Maria. But Eva has found out [about the affair] - it’s great how she finds out, but I’m not going to say! - but she finds out and she’s thinking, ‘ok…’.
“[The pregnancy] That’s definitely thrown a massive spanner in the works and now he doesn’t know what to do again.”
Aidan’s never thought about being a dad
The actor explained: “For him, he’s always been driven by wanting to impress his dad, y’know, in respects to to the factory.
“His dad has always put him down but he’s put him down in a certain way to kind of make him stronger and tell him that he’s made faults.
“That’s why they always seem to fall out and nobody takes him quite that seriously, so he’s never really had any time to think about being a dad so when this happens it’s like, ‘Shit! Oh god really?’.”
The worst thing Eva could do is target his business
“He wants to build this enterprise, he’s always wanted to be seen in his dad’s eyes as taking over where he left off, he wants to impress him, Shayne said. “So yeah, the business, definitely. She’s not as ditzy as people make out, she can be very clued up.”
He (obviously) wouldn’t like it if his daughter had a boyfriend who was like Aidan
Baby Willow May is a long way off dating, but Shayne’s already considered how he’d react if she had a boyfriend who behaved how Aidan has.
“Oh don’t even get me started,” he said. “It’s quite funny, at the start of my interviews when the affair thing about I would say ‘Aidan’s torn between two women, he’s fallen in love with the pair of them’.
“Now he’s just being a dog. He is. At the end of the day, the second time around, Maria instigated it and he could have said no but was like, ‘Ok, you’re not going to tell anyone? That’s fine’.
“I was no longer feeling sorry for him but if anyone did that to my daughter... oooh! Don’t get me started, I’m very protective.”
Shayne gets heckled about the storyline
“It’s great, he laughed. “Nothing when they’re there [up close] because they’re nice when they’re there, saying ‘Can I have your autograph?’. But from afar…
“They all just get so involved in who i should be with, it’s ‘oh you shouldn’t be with her, you shouldn’t be doing that, get with Maria’ or ‘stay with Eva, how could you’ so it’s nice that they’ve invested time in the storyline because it is going to kick off now.
“It’s a lot deeper so it’s fun to hear the different type of heckles.”
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