Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
CORRIE STAR
Shelley King is getting used to women stopping her in the street and confiding their harrowing stories of domestic abuse.
They usually tell her what’s been happening to “a friend”, and she nods, to show she understands as she listens.
But playing abused wife Yasmeen Metcalfe in Coronation Street has taught Shelley a lot about the coping methods of victims of coercive control. And she knows that most of the “friends” being discussed are actually the women standing in front of her.
“Often people don’t admit it,” she explains. “They’ll stop me in the street and say that this has happened to a friend, but it’s quite obvious from the emotional way they speak that it’s actually happening to them.
“I’ve had letters too, from people in coercive relationships for 30-odd years.
“One woman got out of the relationship, which was a positive thing and people have approached the Coronation Street advice page for help after seeing what Yasmeen is going through.
“So there is light at the end of the tunnel – there are people who have survived this and made other lives for themselves.”
Shelley has won acclaim for her performance in the coercive control storyline – one of the most harrowing on the soap.
Yasmeen is the matriarch of Coronation Street’s first-ever Muslim family who joined the soap in 2014. But viewers have seen her gradually falling prey to the psychological abuse of her husband, DJ and magician
Geoff Metcalfe.
Geoff began slowly, belittling and undermining Yasmeen. Then he convinced her she has a drink problem and began pressurising her to clean the house every day to his exacting standards.
In particularly distressing scenes he left his claustrophobic wife alone locked inside his magician’s box and cruelly killed her pet chicken Charlotte, before serving it up for her dinner, only revealing what he had done as she tucked into her meal.
Most recently he has done his best to isolate Yasmeen from her determined granddaughter Alya, who is seeking to expose him and uncover the truth about his behaviour and his past.
The abuse has seen confident Yasmeen reduced to a nervous shadow of her former self.
Viewers complained that they found the scenes too difficult to watch. But
ON ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP HELP
Shelley, 64, defends Corrie’s decision to tackle the subject.
“Any drama worth its salt should challenge you, so I think it’s very brave to deal with a subject as dark and bleak as this, involving an older person. It’s an important story to tell. “It’s got to be an uncomfortable watch. It’s an uncomfortable