Coronation Street star Bill Fellows has recalled a chat he had with his namesake Bill Roache upon joining the long-running soap. The actor made his debut on the ITV soap's famous cobbles as Stu Carpenter in October last year.
Viewers were first introduced to the character when he inadvertently saved the vital piece of evidence which showed that Corey Brent was guilty of the murder of Seb Franklin months earlier in May 2021. The former Navy man was living on the streets at the time and came across the promising footballer's belongings when he dumped them after causing Seb's death.
After some convincing from Nina Lucas, Seb's bereft girlfriend, and Asha Alahan, Stu went to the police and eventually, just as he was about to do a runner with his dad, Corey was shipped off to the police station in the back of a van by Gary Windass. Kelly Neelan, who had been wrongly convicted of Seb's murder, was freed and later came across Stu on the streets.
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But once she found a home back to Weatherfield, Kelly came to Stu's rescue and since then, he's been living with Yasmeen Metcalfe and even got himself a job as a chef at Speed Daal. A lot is still unknown about Stu but this week, Corrie fans will see him come face-to-face with his daughter.
Stu is furious with Yasmeen for interfering when he discovers that she has found daughter Bridget’'s address. But when Kelly urges him to try and make contact with Bridget, Stu decides to give it a try. But he's left crushed when he arrives andd knocks on the door but she panics and orders him to leave.
Stu begs her to hear him out and assures her that he never hurt anyone. Stu apologises to Yasmeen for snapping and says it was the wrong address - but what is he hiding? As for Bill, he's now loving Stu's past being explored. He told the Manchester Evening News that he thought it was 'great' when he was told about the introduction of the new characters and said it was 'curious' to see who they would bring in to play his on-screen relatives and what they'd look like.
"The actresses who play the parts are great," Bill said. "They're nice people and are really good." As for exploring his character's past, Bill said: "I love that. It was always a possibility but you have to be in it [the soap], be part of a story and eventually... So Iain [MacLeod, Corrie producer] called me and told me what my past was and I went, 'woah!'
"That was my reaction. It was very unexpected. Well, I knew something was coming because we talked about it but it was unexpected to the level, like a life-changing level, of his person and his past was much bigger than I had envisaged."
Bill has now spent nine months on-screen, and slightly longer on the Salford-based set, and in that time we've seen Stu get into a bit of bother will Bill Roache's character, the legend that is Ken Barlow. Asked what it was like to work with the 90-year-old actor, Bill said; "It was an iconic moment for me.
"I was brought up on Coronation Street and it was a joy to work with him and it was a nice little friendly, comic story we did together and I hope we have more scenes [together]. I'm going to tell the producers, 'Please give me more scenes with Bill Roache'."
And talking about a comment Bill made to him, the Stu actor explained: "He said to me halfway through filming, which was a compliment, he said: 'Bill, I like this character. It's great for Coronation Street'. And he cares about the show. It was great, I loved it."
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