I’ve always wanted to be in a Fringe show. And I’m off to a flyer
ACTRESS ON LIFE AFTER WEATHERFIELD AND HER JOY AT PLAYING EDINBURGH FESTIVAL Ex-Corrie star to hand out leaflets for her play
If you see former Corrie star Julie Hesmondhalgh handing out flyers during the Edinburgh Festival, don’t worry, she’s not fallen on hard times.
The actress is coming to the Fringe and can’t wait to swap the cobbles of Weatherfield for those of the Royal Mile.
She said: “I’ve always wanted to do Edinburgh but, before Corrie, when I was a jobbing actress in the theatre, I could never afford to take a show there. When I’ve been up, it’s always been very brief, in and out, but now I’m doing it and I’ve got quite an easy time of it.
“It’s a funded show and it’s at the Traverse. It’s a bit of a cheat so I am going to hand out flyers on the Royal Mile. I feel like it’s the proper Edinburgh experience. Otherwise, it’s l ike going to Glastonbury and staying in a hotel outside of it.”
Julie, 48, has got used to being at the heart of things. She played Hayley Cropper in Corrie from 1998 to 2014, the first transgender character in a British soap.
She was brought in as comic relief but her relationship with unconventional roll shop owner Roy Cropper, played by David Neilson, developed into something else entirely.
She said: “There was a chemistry between those two characters and the public just liked us and wanted us to be together. They were rooting for us, these two socially awkward people. Because
It’s a bit of a cheat so I’m going to hand out flyers on the Royal Mile
we were such eccentric characters, we couldn’t go off and have affairs so they had to keep us together, which never happens in soaps.
“So for the most unusual two people on the Street, we were the most conservative with a small ‘c’. That in itself, without any of the stuff they did about awareness of trans issues and stuff like that, was triumph. I’m really proud of it.” Since leaving, she has appeared in a number of acclaimed stage roles and on TV in shows including Happy Valley and, most recently, Broadchurch.
Her performance as Trish Winterman, a rape victim whose attack was the focal point of the third and f inal series, earned her a Bafta nomination earlier this year but she revealed she almost said no to the role.
She said: “I was in the last week of a play about an American academic dying of cancer and I’d lost a stone and half and shaved my head. I just got this call saying, ‘ They want you to pay this part, no audition,’ which was amazing.
“I was off my head with excitement but I wanted to talk to writer Chris Chibnall because it was about rape. I didn’t want to be the face of something which would be controversial for the wrong reasons, another gratuitous TV sexual assault.
“I thought the fact they had even cast me in the role, a really ordinary- looking middle- aged woman, was interesting. Then I spoke to Chris and realised that was very much what he was trying to do, to make the point that rape isn’t an act of desire, it’s an act of violence. I think it’s a really important conversation about the portrayal of rape on telly. I was really proud of it in the end.”
Julie, who is married to actor and writer Ian Kershaw and has two daughters, didn’t think she would ever leave the platform and security provided by Coronation Street. But when she took some time off to do a play, it rekindled her passion for the stage.
Her expectations of life after Weatherfield were modest but have been exceeded tenfold. In Edinburgh, she’s starring in The Greatest Play In The History Of The World, about a man and a woman facing a future where they are the last people left standing. It’s a very personal project as her husband wrote it after she asked him to create her a one-woman show.
She said: “He came back with this beautiful show, full of twists and turns. It’s a reflection on what is important in life and what you would want your legacy to be.” The Greatest Play In The History Of The World is at the Traverse Theatre from August 3 to 26.