People have told me their stories... I’ve shed tears for abuse victims
CORRIE ACTOR CHRIS ON HIS LIFE-CHANGING ROLE
Stepping out of the room, Chris Harper tried to blink the tears away. But nothing could stop the emotion which had risen as he listened to the heart-breaking words of a woman named Lucie, who had been raped when she was a child and groomed by a paedophile as a teenager.
The Coronation Street actor says: “I went out into the stairwell after the meeting and burst into tears.”
He plays evil Nathan Curtis, who groomed, abused and trafficked teenager Bethany Platt in the hit ITV soap, and Chris will never forget the moment he first met a victim of sexual abuse.
The meeting had been arranged by the charity NSPCC to help give Chris an insight into the psychology behind the paedophile he would be playing.
The 40-year-old recalls how he told her how brave she was, before rushing out of the meeting room.
He says: “She was abused when very young and when she was a teenager she was groomed by a guy she met online. She thought she was in love with him, and scared to lose him, but he was abusing her the whole time.
“That was something I learned pretty early on, that victims of abuse are often abused multiple times in their lives because predators spot vulnerable people to attack.
“I also discovered through Lucie and others how the abuse can affect their entire lives. Even just a few minutes of abuse can change their life for ever.”
Chris has since met hundreds of victims, including some of those who suffered during the Rotherham sex abuse scandal, through his work with the NSPCC and similar charities such as Barnardo’s and Voicing CSA. But it hasn’t got any easier for him. Now, his hard-hitting storyline in Coronation Street is reaching a climax. This week, Corrie fans will see if evil Nathan will get what’s coming to him as he stands trial for abusing Bethany.
Incredibly, Chris hasn’t suffered any backlash. Instead, he’s had lots of people approach him in the street to congratulate him on raising awareness of the terrible issue, and reckons as many as one in five of those who want to shake his hand have been affected by abuse.
The actor says: “People will come up and tell me how one of their parents was abused, or how their uncle is now in prison for abuse or how their PE teacher abused them.” Sometimes they can’t find the words but he has come to learn instinctively that they’ve been a victim. One encounter sticks in his mind... “I was on a tram in Manchester and one of the ticket guards came up to me and held my hand and said, ‘Thank you for what you’re doing, it means so much to me’. Her lip wobbled as the door closed behind me. It was over so quickly but it left me in floods of tears.
“Abuse affects so many more people than we realise. This crime exists in shame and secrecy, and the more NSPCC, Voicing CSA, Barnardo’s and other charities can throw light on it, the less the victims can live in shame.” Chris
A ticket guard came up, held my hand and said, ‘Thank you for what you’re doing’ CHRIS HARPER ON BEING APPROACHED BY VICTIMS
I suddenly heard a rustling from under the duvet and Lucy passed me a Malteser CHRIS ON FINDING LIGHT RELIEF WHILE FILMING FIRST SEX SCENE
is happy to be a listening ear but he adds: “I’ve been very careful not to offer advice to victims who approach me as I’m not a trained counsellor.
“For me it’s more a journey of raising awareness, showing victims they’re not alone and it’s not their fault.”
It’s no surprise to learn that Chris finds it hard to switch off. “I do take it to bed with me,” he says. “I’m up late retweeting messages from charities, thinking of ways to raise awareness.
“For better or worse I’m going to be running up the Gherkin [tower] in London later this month to raise money for the NSPCC. It’s 300-andsomething steps in four minutes.”
Chris, who ran the London Marathon for the NSPCC earlier this year, adds: “I don’t know how I’m going to manage it, I’ve lost condition since I ran the marathon.” Thankfully he has a loving wife, Emily, who he can lean on. “My wife has been incredible, she’s been so supportive right from the word go,” he says.
“When I told her I was up for the role of Nathan, she said, ‘Chris, do you realise how important this job is?’
“She knew a lot more about what was going on, how there were pushes from the Government, and Corrie was just one part of a big nationwide push to raise awareness.
“She told me, ‘It’s going to mean a lot to a lot of people. You have a oncein-a-lifetime opportunity here’. So I owe her that, and also the way she has supported me all the way through, whether it’s been £89 return journeys to visit me in Manchester or giving me a hug when I’ve come home in floods of tears after a charity event.”
One way the actor winds down is by snuggling up on the sofa with Emily to watch television. “Normally we bond over an episode or two of a British drama,” he says.
“At the moment it’s Doctor Foster. Before that it was Happy Valley.” And luckily, the cast and crew at Coronation Street are equally up for some light relief from the dark storyline.
Recalling how he and Lucy Fallon, who plays Bethany, filming their first sex scene together, Chris says: “It started off very seriously. I was sitting there in the low light. The camera crew were being very quiet.
“The director was being very respectful of it being our ‘first time’. Then suddenly I heard a rustling from under the duvet and Lucy passed me a Malteser, apologising it had got a bit warm. That’s a typical day at Corrie.”
Chris grew up in Middlesex and got into acting at 17 when his parents’ marriage broke down. He says: “My life fell apart but somehow I got picked up by the nice gang at school. They happened to be keen on theatre and the next thing I knew I was playing servants in Shakespeare plays.
“Until then I’d only had two ambitions in life: to either be a probation officer or a midfielder for Liverpool.”
Chris went on to train at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. He has appeared in British dramas including Upstairs Downstairs and Life on Mars, and most notably in ITV’s BAFTA award-winning movie Housewife, 49.
And he plans to throw himself into another dark role next year, as Charles Bruno in a stage version of Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, with ex-Emmerdale star John Middleton.
“Characters who have a duplicitous side are always the most fun and challenging to play,” Chris says. “I really wanted to make Nathan an iconic baddie who provoked viewers to scream at their screen, ‘Don’t trust him!’.
“I just underestimated how much it would affect me emotionally and how much I’d connect with the story.”
But he adds: “Even though my role as Nathan is done, my work with abuse victims will continue. I’ve started something now and I’m not going to give up on it.”
Childline receives around a million contacts a year from young people in need of support but is only able to respond to three in every four who get in touch. The NSPCC service delivers close to 300,000 counselling sessions for an ever-widening range issues. See childline.org.uk and nspcc.org.uk.
Coronation Street is on ITV on tonight, Wednesday and Friday nights.