Kym Marsh interview: Can Michelle protect her family?

Wherever the Connors go, high powered drama is never far behind. Once Michelle makes the decision to flee Weatherfield with Ryan and Ali, they quickly get embroiled into a high speed car chase with Ronan in hot pursuit. But when Michelle’s engine fails, the family become sitting ducks.

We sat down with Kym Marsh at Coronation Street’s recent press day to talk about Michelle, Ali, and Ryan’s escape from terrifying Ronan...

“She’s not had the best of luck, has she?” Sighed Kym, who plays Michelle Connor. She went on to joke, “Kym loves it! Kym’s happy for her to be miserable.” It was noted that doom seems to follow Michelle wherever she goes and whilst Kym joked about it, she also said, “as an actress, it’s great because I keep being tested and and I keep being given great stories to play and there’s always something new to do. Now I’m like a stunt driver! So it’s good. It sounds really strange when I say it’s good fun because it looks like it’s not but it is, we enjoy it.” 

Discussing the dramatic car chase, Kym explained to us how fun it was to film those scenes, but also how tiring it understandably was. “It was a pretty intense few days actually because we were on location for a good few days. It was a bit exhausting and there’s a lot of hanging around as well in between so it was quite tiring. For me personally my throat was just so sore by the end of it because I was just going [pretends to scream] the whole time, but it was good fun.” 

Whilst most of the exterior driving scenes were performed by stunt drivers, Kym described how it was to film her bits of driving. “obviously there was a lot of dialogue in the car so I had to do the driving to match what we were doing so you could see the car behind and all the rest of it.” She continued, “it was a bit like patting my head and rubbing my stomach at the same time, it was a bit like trying to do everything at once. I actually found it quite stressful which was quite good seeing as I was supposed to be stressed anyway. It was good because it was something new, you know I’ve been in the show nearly 13 years and so I’m still learning other things, you know. It’s the first time I’ve ever been given something like that to do and it was great, it was good fun.“

During the time Kym was driving, the stunt driver, Zarene Dallas, was crouched down in the back of the car! “That car is really small in the back. So there’s me in the front, Ryan [Prescott, who plays Ryan Connor] James [Burrows, who plays Ali Neeson] behind me and then there was a microphone so they could get everybody’s dialogue and then this lady was just like this [sits in a ball in her chair] in the back of the car, so she was sort of all cramped up in the back and now when you see it you’d never know she was there but it was so, it was just brilliant. But they were great, they were really good and made me feel quite safe but I still did find it quite stressful.”

During our interview with Kym, it was pointed out how she’s become a true Corrie matriarch. “What we know of Michelle is how fiercely loyal she is to her family, always, and she’s gone into complete protect mode”, agreed Kym. “She is the lioness of the Cubs and she’s kind of trying to protect her brood, really. I totally get that, because I would do anything for my children so you know, you would put yourself in danger for your kids, it’s totally believable.” 

With Ryan terrified for his life after Cormac’s death, Michelle decides to go and see Ronan for herself... “Maybe she shouldn’t have gone to his wake,” Kym laughed. “But again I think she’s just not thinking of that. She’s literally just going, “I want to save my son’s life” and so she’s terrified of that at the moment and she’s just like, “someone’s got to do something” and those two [Ryan and Ali] are just constantly fighting, you know, they’re at each other’s throats, they’re getting wreaths put on their car; she’s just desperate.” 

Kym was quick to praise her co-star Alan McKenna, who plays Ronan. “I really have to mention Alan actually. He was absolutely brilliant. [He is] a wonderful baddie. They were the first scenes I’d ever filmed with him, because you know we shoot a lot of things out of sequence so that was the first one for me and he was so intimidating. He’s such a lovely man, he was so intimidating.” Kym carried on to say, “I was welling up before I was meant to well up, I was like, “save it, save it!” But he genuinely was scary. But yeah, I get it, I totally get why she did it and I love the fact that we’re seeing that protective side.”

We asked Kym about Michelle’s relationship with Ryan and Ali, where Kym told us, “I love it and I love working with James and Ryan as well. I love the dynamic, I love how different they both are from each other and I love their squabbling. And we’ve also seen them be a bit silly together as well over the Whipcoin thing, which was quite amusing because we saw a little bit of, “ ooh, are they going to start being friends?”and then suddenly this happens again, and their hatred of each other rears its head.” 

Ryan and Ali have constantly been shown to have a complicated love/hate relationship, and most of that stems from both of them wanting to be Michelle’s favourite. “A lot of the angst towards each other is because of Michelle because they both want to be the most important. It is quite childish but you can kind of get why, because you know it’s an unusual situation for them to be in.”

As the Connors do everything they can to get away, who will survive the wrath of Ronan and who will be left fighting for their lives? Tune in next week to watch the action-packed episodes!

Sophie Williams

Read some more of my general natterings on Twitter @sophie_jw26

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