‘Coronation Street’ veteran Sue Nicholls has revealed she managed to talk soap bosses out of a storyline that would have seen her character turning to alcohol to help her cope with loneliness.
The soap actress, best known for playing Audrey Roberts, admitted that she “didn’t agree” with the proposed storyline as she felt it would have been out of character for the salon owner, and had been thought up just because of her age.
“There was something pitched to me years ago that the storyline could be that Audrey was at home and going home drinking a lot,” she told Digital Spy, joking: “A bit true to life actually.”
Sue continued: “I love my husband of course, but he isn’t with me all the time.
“I asked: ‘Why do you think somebody, of whatever age I was, that just because she works in the salon and goes home that she’s lonely and needs to drink? Not necessarily’.”
She added: “I tried to pitch it back to them that I didn’t want to play a drunk forlorn little thing. It is nice that they went the other way.”
Sue made her first appearance as Audrey in ‘Corrie’ more than 30 years ago, and has since gone on to become one of the soap’s most enduring staple characters.
However, in that 30 years, the show has seen a lot of changes, with Sue commenting earlier this year that she “seems to know the people at her local Sainsbury’s” more than “half of the new Coronation Street cast”.