Corrie’s Lioness Mum!
Actress Lorna Laidlaw talks to us about being a lioness mum and making the leap from the tiny cast of Doctors to the bustling cobbles of CoronationStreet
When Lorna Laidlaw was offered the role of feisty mum Aggie Bailey in Coronation Street, she realised that the role was almost tailormade for her.
Just like Aggie, bubbly Lorna is cheer ful and upbeat with an infectious laugh. And just like Aggie, she would do absolutely anything for her two grown-up sons.
“I’m one of those people who wouldn’t step on a bee or hurt anything, but when you have babies you go, ‘If anybody touched them I would happily kill them!’” Lorna laughs. “It’s surprising, because it’s something you’ve never even thought about before, but when these little people come into the world, the lioness absolutely comes to the fore.
“My boys are 27 and 25 now. They live nearby and we FaceTime all the time.” Regular soap fans might recognise Lorna from the eight years she spent as popular practice manager Mrs Tembe in daytime drama series Doctors. She quit the show in 2018 and just six months later, was happy to be offered
“I thought, ‘I can’t believe I’m in Ken Barlow’s house!’ It was scary”
the role of nurse Aggie.
“I’d done as much as I could in Doctors and felt it was time to spread my wings,” she explains. “I left with literally nothing lined up and jumped off a cliff, and Corrie caught me!”
The arrival of Aggie, husband Ed and grown-up sons Michael and James made headline news around the world. When the family moved into No 3 Coronation Street – the former home of cobbles stalwart Emily
Bishop – they made histor y as the first black family to live on the street in the show’s 59-year histor y.
“I was very proud,” Lorna says. “It was a massive thing and it went global. My family in America were saying it was in the New York Times. I didn’t realise how huge it was until I was in the middle of it – it was a lot of pressure.”
Lorna (57) who was born and raised in the West Midlands, briefly worked as a physiotherapist and then a social worker before turning to acting full-time.
She worked in theatre then car ved out a successful career in children’s television, starring in Grandpa In My Pocket and presenting the CBeebies show Tikkabilla.
After that came Doctors and then Coronation Street, which has seen her tackle a variety of dramatic storylines – from Aggie helping her son James cope after coming out as gay, to her latest, which sees her husband Ed and eldest son Michael subjected to racist remarks by their boss.
While Michael is furious and wants to tackle it head on, Ed and Aggie suggest it’s best to turn the other cheek.
“I’ve experienced racism myself,” Lorna says. “People ask where I’m from, never assuming I was born here. I say ‘here’ and they say, ‘no, before that’. And I explain that I was actually born in Birmingham.
“Financially Aggie and Ed are in trouble and they need the money from this job to
get them through. That’s why they want to ride it through and not say anything. But I always challenge it
(racism) myself.
“If you don’t, you’re leaving it for somebody else to deal with it. I’ve got two kids and they’re going to be bringing up their kids.
“So if there’s a point where you can stop somebody, I think it’s important to do that, as generously as you possibly can.”
After a year on the cobbles Lorna feels happy and settled, but admits it was a different story during her first week, when many of her scenes were with the show’s longest-ser ving actor William Roache.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m in Ken Barlow’s house!’ He’s so lovely, but it was very scary. There were only 12 of us in Doctors and there are 80 people in the cast of Coronation Street.
“At the start I often came close to calling people by their character name. I used to look through the script and see who was in a scene with me and then write their real name by their character name to try to remember!” For more information: WWW.ITV.COM/ CORONATIONSTREET and on Twitter: @itvcorrie