Brookside and West End star Claire Sweeney is to join the cast of Coronation Street as the mother of Weatherfield mechanic Tyrone Dobbs.
Evelyn Plummer (Dame Maureen Lipman) told her grandson Tyrone (Alan Halsall) that his biological mother Cassie is dead.
However, the soap stalwart will be floored when Brookside star Claire turns up on the cobbles as Cassie and Evelyn will be forced to come clean about her betrayal.
Tyrone grew up believing that his mum was Jackie Dobbs, played by Margi Clarke, but his world came crashing down in 2018 when an investigations into his parentage brought him into contact with Evelyn.
He discovered evidence that Evelyn's daughter Cassandra was his biological mother and was told the grandmother abandoned Tyrone at a police station in 1982 because she didn't trust her daughter to look after him properly due to her drug habit.
Jackie, who Tyrone believed to be his mother, found him at the police station and brought him up as her own.
Now Tyrone faces more heartache as secrets and lies from his past threaten to destroy his relationship with his grandma and he has to navigate a new relationship with his mother.
Claire said: “Even though I’ve been lucky enough to have enjoyed an amazingly varied career for nearly 40 years - being cast in Coronation Street is, to me, better than being cast in a Hollywood movie!
"I’ve watched it all my life and can’t quite believe that I’ll now be stepping onto those famous cobbles myself. I was really nervous when I got the scripts to audition as this show means so much to me and my family and this is Corrie gold, I was beyond thrilled and very grateful when I got the call that Iain MacLeod is trusting me to play Tyrone's Mum and work alongside one of my heroes, Dame Maureen Lipman.
"Cassie is a character who is definitely going to make an impact - I just hope the audience will enjoy watching her as much as I'm going to be enjoying playing her!”
Coronation Street Producer Iain MacLeod added: “Claire bowled us over in her audition and the scenes with her, Tyrone and Evelyn will be electric. Her arrival will mark the start of a tumultuous time for Tyrone and the family and her impact will be felt across the street in the weeks and months that follow.”
The soap icon has yet to begin filming with her first episode airing in late June.
