Coronation Street’s Bethany Platt faces a terrifying ordeal next week when she’s kidnapped and held hostage by Kayla Clifton, the vengeful daughter of corrupt copper Neil who was jailed for sexually abusing Bethany last year.
Deluded Kayla believes her dad is innocent, and has been secretly plotting against Bethany and her ex-boyfriend Craig Tinker for what she sees as the lies that put her father behind bars. Lucy Fallon, the award-winning actress who plays Bethany, is pleased her character finally gets to expose creepy Kayla.
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“From the beginning things haven’t been great between Kayla and Bethany,” she says, “Kayla starts to force Craig into believing his rituals don’t work to make his OCD worse, to the point where Craig wants to quit the police force. Having already gone through her locker in the restaurant and found the diary about Craig, Bethany already thinks she’s a bit weird.”
Concerned for Craig, Bethany goes looking for him at Kayla’s on Monday 23 July – and soon wishes she hadn’t… “Bethany sees a picture in the house of Kayla and Neil,” reveals Fallon. “Kayla panics the game is up and hits her over the head with a vase and ties her up! It’s not pre-meditated, she’s in a massive state. Bethany is terrified and thinks she’s going to die.”
On Wednesday 25 July, Bethany tries to reason with her captor and comes to realise Kayla is as much a victim of dad Neil’s manipulation as she is. “Kayla is under the illusion that Neil was this heroic figure, which Craig also did at first. Lots of people felt that way about him. She starts to see Kayla more as a victim, which puts them on the same side.
“Bethany will want to help her, and knows she will now be really damaged by what her dad did. Neil has forced Kayla into believing he is the good guy and that Bethany made it all up, then forced Craig to lie for her. In a way he has groomed his own daughter into believing him.”
Despite having to launch a violent attack with a vase, Fallon assures us Mollie Winnard, who plays Kayla, is nothing like her disturbed alter-ego in real life. “She is lovely, we really get on,” she beams. “When she hit me over the head we rehearsed it before and I took a video on my phone of her pretending to hit me with the prop! We have a laugh.”
A year on from when the controversial grooming storyline was at it’s peak, Fallon is supportive of the show continuing to explore the effects of the abuse on her character. “Bethany is still dealing with that and we’ll always see it come up in the future. When we spoke to survivors who’d been through similar things, they said it’s something that stays with you forever. It’s important to reflect that in the future.
“I still get messages from people who experienced similar or know somebody who has, saying they thought the storyline was good and raised awareness. Even now I’m getting a lot of reaction from it.”
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