NEW SOAP ROLE
ON his deathbed, Kimberly Hart-Simpson’s father told his aspiring actress daughter: “Just do me a favour and get Corrie, love.” And now, after 10 years of trying, at last she has fulfilled his dying wish.
Kimberly, 33, knows just how her dad would have reacted if he had lived to see her Coronation Street debut, on June 19, playing Nicky Wheatley, the bubbly sex worker who seduces Daniel Osbourne.
She says: “He would be beaming with pride and would tell everyone.
“He’d go in a shop and someone would ask him, ‘Where’s the biscuits?’ and he’d say, ‘My daughter’s in Corrie.’ He’d say it for no reason. It would have meant the world to him, but I know he’ll know.”
Kimberly started trying out for roles in the soap just after she graduated from drama school at the age of 22. She auditioned so many times she was on first-name terms with the car park attendant at the Manchester studios.
So when she finally landed the role as Nicky, who seduces lonely widower Daniel, it was an emotional moment.
Kimberly says: “I was in a cellar underneath a stage in St Helen’s Theatre, making some dresses for other actors to wear on stage, when I got the call that I’d got the role in Coronation Street.
“I cried on the floor because it was 10 years building up to this moment. The other people I was working with thought someone had been murdered.”
It was her dad Kevin Simpson’s passion for the soap that had made her so determined to be a part of the cast.
She says: “Unfortunately, I lost my dad in 2007. We had the luxury of being there when he passed and one of the last things he said to me was, ‘Just do me a favour and get Corrie, love.’
“That’s been one of the driving forces – he knew how important it was to me. My dad was a massive Corrie fan and we had that shared connection with it.”
Kevin was a drummer and Kimberly inherited his love of performing.
She says: “He was a great support and got so excited at the prospect of it. I think telling him that I’d reached my goal would have been a brilliant moment.”
Kimberly began emailing Corrie bosses as soon as she left drama school.
She says: “The second I graduated I emailed them, because I knew that was where I was meant to be.” She auditioned for “loads” of roles, including most recently Kate Connor’s best friend Lolly, and Sophie Webster’s girlfriend Maddie Heath.
She became a familiar face at the Coronation Street studios.
Kimberly says: “Everyone knows me by name there, even the car park attendant. As I drove in for the audition, he said, ‘You all right, Kimberly?’ I thought, ‘This is ridiculous, the car park attendant shouldn’t know my name’.
“I just had my heart set on it. I’ve been watching it from the womb – I was brought up on it.
“My mum and dad weren’t together, but every time I went to my dad’s, even if he hadn’t seen me for a month, he’d still tell me to shut up if he was watching Corrie. It mattered that much to him. I think it mattered more than me.”
Earlier this year, Kimberly was asked to audition for a new character, sex worker Nicky, who meets Daniel at a party. He is later furious to discover Nicky’s occupation, having thought the attraction was mutual, but the pair then meet up again, with Daniel paying Nicky to be a shoulder to cry on as he talks about his loneliness after the death of his wife Sinead.
Kimberly has no qualms about joining Coronation Street as a sex worker.
She says: “I see it as another job people do to survive in an incredibly difficult world. I want to represent people in that industry, because it’s too easy to concentrate on the negative side of it.
“These women live amongst us, it doesn’t make them a lesser person. It makes them a hell of a lot stronger.”
Even so, she acknowledges that Nicky could divide opinion. She says: “Some people will say Daniel deserves some happiness, but there’s going to be a backlash that she’s a sex worker.
“In time, though, I think people will get to like her and see the other side to