Coronation Street fans have been worried about Audrey Roberts for some months as she turned to drinking to deal with her fears of growing older. And a reason for their concern was soon given as the street legend, played by Sue Nicholls, revealed to her friends that she tried to take her own life in emotional scenes.
Audrey's battle with her mental health coincided with son Stephen Reid's return to the cobbles. But since his arrival in Weatherfield back in June, Corrie f ans have been suspicious of his motives.
While the reason for his return to the cobbles has been unknown to viewers of the ITV soap, they have come to conclude that Stephen, played by Todd Boyce, must be short of money, having even been seen using his wife's credit card, and are sure he's after his mum's inheritance. This became more evident when he lost it with a set of wheelie bins after finding out his mum was no longer organising trust funds and that he wouldn't be a part of his will.
Then last week, fans witnessed Stephen’s kiss with Rovers Return landlady Jenny Connor. The pair locked lips after Stephen made his move after finding out she was the sole owner of the beloved pub. It came after Jenny called off her relationship with Leo before ending the night engaged to him despite her secret liaison.
Fans now think that Stephen could be set to blackmail Jenny and Corrie's producer Iain MacLeod has now teased that the storyline is set to get a lot darker. "He will continue to get more and more desperate, and more and more dark as the story unfolds," he told the Manchester Evening News and other press.
“The beauty of this character really is that he’s got this huge longevity in terms of his connection to the show and to a heritage family, but actually is a bit of a blank canvas that if you think back through his archive scenes, we don’t really know a lot about him. So, we thought, well, actually, if we’re going to fill in those blanks and we’re going to learn more about him, shouldn’t we make him dark, dangerous, interesting and scheming?”
Speaking about the effect Stephen’s return will have on his mother, Audrey, Iain wasn't able to soothe viewers' worries. "I always worry about Audrey, I think any Coronation Street fan should, and do, worry about Audrey, especially because she’s quite fragile at the moment in terms of what we’ve seen on screen recently," he admitted.
"She has been through this depression story. She’s attempted to take her own life and that makes her particularly vulnerable to Stephen because she’s clinging on to him as something positive, the light at the end of the tunnel for her emotionally. And he’s really not that."
But he was quick to reassure them about whether we can expect to see Audrey sticking around the cobbles for a long time yet. "She won’t come to be in any physical jeopardy, I should say, but emotionally, the stakes for her are incredibly high, because she’s put all of her sort of maternal eggs in Stephen’s basket," Iain said.
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