There's a good interview with Julia Goulding, who plays Shona Ramsey in Coronation Street, in The Sun's Fabulous magazine today - and it's a good read.
Julia talks about when she took the phone call to say she’d got the part in Coronation Street as Shona. She was a on a train at the time.
“I’m an actor so I didn’t suppress anything!” jokes Julia. “I scrambled over the lad sitting next to me – god knows what he must have thought – and ran into the vestibule and phoned my mum and my boyfriend and we were just laughing and crying and laughing and crying. I couldn’t believe it. Then I had to get the Tube home and I was on there smiling like an idiot.”
For Greater-Manchester-born Julia, a Corrie super-fan from the age of five, it really was a dream come true. She’d beaten off the competition to land the part of troubled Shona Ramsey, mother of Kylie Platt’s murderer and eventual new love interest of grief-stricken widower David. In the space of a year, she’s become a fan favourite as tough, feisty and flawed but ultimately decent and kind Shona, and two months ago viewers voted her Best Newcomer at the Inside Soap Awards.
The next 12 months look very bright indeed for the 32-year-old actress.
“Winning the award was a pinch-me moment,” she says. “Because it was viewer-voted, it was really wonderful and a genuine surprise. I feel overwhelmed and thrilled with it.
“It’s been a bit of a whirlwind. I was really nervous when I started, knowing I was eventually going to get together with David, which were big shoes to fill after Kylie died. I didn’t know how the public would react to that or whether they’d like her. But because Shona’s storyline with David has basically taken a year, it’s allowed viewers to get to know her and understand why she is the way she is. She’s a good person who makes bad decisions. So really they’ve embraced her, and I’m grateful for that.”
On Julia’s first day, she walked into the green room where the cast hang out between scenes, and was immediately star-struck.
“I was introduced to David Neilson in his pinny dressed as Roy, and Simon Gregson [Steve McDonald] and that was a bit like: ‘Whoa! This is so weird.’ It was an emotional moment, but one I was only able to reflect on afterwards because at the time it was pure shock. When I was about 10, I had a crush on Simon Gregson. He was a dreamboat – those blue eyes!”
Corrie is Julia’s first break in television, after she left drama school six years ago and based herself in theatre. Her college tutor suggested she apply to drama school (“I was just a working-class kid from north Manchester, I didn’t even know what drama school was!”) and she eventually won a place at the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) which she describes as “the other best day of my life”.
An only child, she didn’t grow up in an acting family – mum Lorna, 58, is a town planner and dad Ian, 61, is a teacher in a prison – but a childhood visit to the Corrie set on the old Granada Studios Tour planted the seed.
“I remember telling my mum after that trip that I wanted to be an actor. I always loved dressing up and the make-believe world, and although my parents aren’t showbiz, they are both characters in their own right. My mum is bonkers but that’s one of the reasons I love her!”
Julia is particularly close to her mum, who is gay and joined her daughter on the Corrie float at this year’s Manchester Pride.
You can read the full interview here
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Not a fan of character or actress.
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