CORONATION Street’s Kelly Neelan will leave the show during an explosive rooftop showdown with Gary Windass with Hollywood special effects.
HOAR exclusively revealed how actress Millie Gibson, 18, quit the soap earlier this year, and now boss Iain MacLeod has revealed her ‘high stakes’ exit.
Actress Millie Gibson will leave the soap in explosive scenes
Coronation Street has used Hollywood special effects for the storyline
Coronation Street have used Hollywood technology straight out of the Marvel films to keep the scenes top secret.
Producer Iain revealed: “We created this incredibly cinematic sequence for the set piece of this week, which I’m incredibly excited about.
“The gist of the week is we all know, and it leaves me with a heavy heart to say it, but we all know Kelly’s leaving the show.
“So we thought, well actually, the fact that Millie is going and that therefore Kelly is going, allows us to go really big and do something incredibly high stakes to maybe have some characters step on all these landmines that we’ve buried for them over the years and have them all go off in one cataclysmic explosion.
“So we’ve really thrown everything at this week to try and bring out all the big secrets lies, reveals, and schemes. As I say, it’s literally got very high stakes jeopardy.”
The explosive week will also see Gary forced to revisit the site where he murdered Kelly’s dad Rick.
Iain added: “Gary has to retrace his steps back into the forest of doom where he once fought for his life with Kelly’s dad, Rick Neelan.
“It’s a really brilliant tying up/full stop on that story that began with that desperate act from Gary all those years ago.
“And at times we’ve toyed with blowing it all up and revealing the full secret to everybody. But as I say, finding ourselves in a position where we’re having to exit Kelly, it just means it’s now or never.
“So we’ve gone with it really and just done something, I think, really special and certainly among the most impressive things that I’ve worked on in my varied career.”
September will also see fans discover the truth about Audrey Roberts’ son Stephen Reid – and see the hairdresser in terrible danger.
“I mean, desperate’s the word,” said Iain.
“And he will continue to get more and more desperate and more and more dark as the story unfolds.
“We definitely brought him back with a slightly different spin from the one we’ve seen before. 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, he’s a bit of a blank canvas. If you dig 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, scheming?
“Mischievous is probably too light a term, but certainly machiavellian may be a stronger word. I think he’s just brought such an injection of otherness into the show.”
Iain added: “He’s a fish out of water and doesn’t quite belong there, which I think will contribute to some of the behaviours we’ll see from him in the coming months and possibly years.
“So all in all I’m really excited to have him back. And our viewers are so canny as well, as soon as he arrived, everyone was like, ‘Ah, I’ve got him marked. He’s going to be a wrong’un.’
“And they’ll proved to be right in no small measure. I’m excited to see the audience reaction to the unfolding story when they realise that he’s every bit as desperate and dangerous as they predicted when he first returned.”
And Audrey, who recently survived a suicide attempt, will be in danger from her son.
“Any Coronation Street fan should and does worry about Audrey, especially because she’s quite fragile at the moment in terms of what we’ve seen on screen recently, she’s been through this depression story, she’s attempted to take her own life,” he added.
“And that makes her peculiarly 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, I think it’s fair to say. But Audrey, obviously will be a large part of the story.
“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 maternal eggs in Stephen’s basket.”
Meanwhile, Toyah Battersby will finally face trial for killing husband Imran Habeeb – as a shocking secret about returning love Spider Nugent is revealed.
Iain teased: “The impending prospect of a life sentence for Toyah ramps up all of her emotions around what’s happened and specifically what she did to Imran and her guilt over all that.
“And she reaches this huge emotional crisis point where she’s got this burning desire to repent or just find some kind of catharsis.
“And she ends up unburdening herself entirely to Spider, talking in detail for the first time about what went on behind the wheel of that car, to what extent or not she feels culpable for what happened to Imran, how much of it was an accident and how much was it deliberate.
“And she unburdens herself to Spider and believes that that’s the best person she could tell, the person she can trust the most.
“And in fact, at that time he’s the worst conceivable option in terms of who she should be confessing to.
“So I can’t say a great deal more than that at this point, but yeah, the idea is that she’s head over heels in love with this guy again and has reconnected with him instantly on his return to the street and feels like he’s her one true friend in the world.
“She might not be wrong, but she’s certainly making a huge mistake in confiding all of this to him, for reasons that will become apparent.”
The soap is also finally rounding out the Bailey family with the introduction of never seen daughter Dee Dee.
“You can expect a certain amount of chaos,” Iain revealed.
“She’s got an incredibly big heart. She’s incredibly competent at her job, but you’d never guess that to meet her.
“She works in law and she’s the sort of person that will issue a kind of point on point take down of a team of hotshot lawyers to defend her client, but will then turn to leave the courtroom and you’ll realise that she’s done the whole thing with her skirt tucked into her knickers.
“She’s just amped up chaos in every regard apart from she’s got this incredibly sharp mind. But she’s loads of fun.”
Stephen Reid’s darkness is also set to be exposed in Coronation Street this September
