RETURN TO CORRIE
BARLOW’S STORY HEATS UP AS HE ARRIVES ON SOAP TOUR
When Peter Barlow swung back onto Coronation Street last fall, viewers knew they’d be in for a new roller-coaster ride with the cobbles’ charming but feckless underachiever. Back from Portsmouth with lots of unanswered questions and much evasiveness, the character’s reappearance was a signal of an expanded Barlow storyline, thanks to new show runner Kate Oates.
Chris Gascoyne, who portrays Barlow, admits without leaking any spoilers that producer Oates has some big plans for the Barlows. Gascoyne says Oates knew what she could do if they brought back the younger Barlow boys, Adam and Daniel.
“If you have history, then you have conflict. That’s exactly what’s she’s done. it’s always the best thing if you have characters who have a conflicted history there. There’s always drama straight away,” Gascoyne says. “She’s very smart on that. I think she wanted to make the Barlows the centre of the show, a kind of dynasty, which she’s working towards.”
Oates was instrumental in drawing Gascoyne back to the show after leaving in 2014. Peter Barlow’s move down south clearly left the door open for him to return.
“She’s very good, Kate Oates. I met her. We had a chat. She’s a very bright producer, and she’s very hands-on on everything. She’s very open and approachable. I thought if I’m going to go back, I thought this would be the person to do it with,” he says.
Gascoyne did return briefly in 2015 for Peter to attend the funeral of his stepmother Deirdre after Anne Kirkbride, the actress who portrayed her, died. Understandably, it was an emotional time for all cast members, many of whom had worked with Kirkbride for decades.
“I was doing a play at the time and they asked if I’d come back and do a couple of days. I said yes right away because I thought it was right for the show and then also for me to kind of realize that Annie is not there anymore. “
He admits filming the funeral was difficult for the cast but says they talked about Kirkbride throughout the day and had a lot of laughs, so that if became a “healing process in a way.”
All of which made it easier to return to the street when he came back full time, but there was still a period of adjustment.
“The strange thing was that everybody else who works there had got used to Annie not being there, but when I went back it was only the second time since she died for me to be in that building, on those sets,” he says. “So it took a little bit of time for me to come to terms that she still wasn’t there.”
Back on the show for about six months now, Peter Barlow’s storyline is heating up. Even being behind the U.K. broadcast schedule, Canadian viewers can already see him heading for disaster once again, despite his best efforts at reform.
“I don’t think he’s, from my point of view, a bad man. He just gets things very wrong most of the time,” Gascoyne says, chuckling at his character’s misfortune. “It’s bad decisions. I think at the moment (referring to CBC’s schedule at the time of the interview) he’s in a lot of trouble but he’s not actually done anything wrong. He’s tried in a sense to do all the right things, and even when he tries to do the right things it tends to go wrong for him.”
None of the Barlows are immune to life’s vagaries in the upcoming story arc. Even Tracy, Peter’s somewhat psycho sister who has avoided consequences for her outrageous behaviour, will face challenges.
“There’s an incident that happens with Ken, and things change for all of us,” Gascoyne hints.
He adds the storyline involves all the family members at different times and that none of the actors know the outcome despite the scenes they have filmed.
The ramped-up storylines for various characters and families is the strategy for adapting to the additional day on Corrie’s broadcast schedule. Going from five to six days, which happens sometime in June in the U.K., will impact production.
“So many things that have to go in place for that. The area around Coronation Street will be bigger. They’re building a park, I think. They’re also building some more streets that obviously we never see but these will be a part of the set. We’ll see these on a regular basis because of course the street’s expanding. We need more places to film because we can’t all film on the street, so the whole show because of this one episode (per week) is expanding massively.”
Gascoyne is unsure whether there will be many more new characters as there are already 70 characters on the street. With that size of cast, he says there’s a character who can appeal to everyone. He references Coronation Street creator Tony Warren, who once said, “If you don’t like someone at No. 1, you’ll like someone at No. 2, you’ll like someone at No. 3.”
The cast, unlike many of the characters, are a really good group, says Gascoyne. Working 12-hour days, five days a week means a lot of time together, and he says they can’t take themselves that seriously.
“To be honest, most of the cast, 99 per cent of them, are just fantastic, down to earth normal people and very funny. All of them, in fact, are very funny,” he says.
And Kate Ford, who plays his narky sister Tracy, fits that description perfectly.
“Kate, of all of the people, is possibly the furthest away from anything that Tracy is like. She’s not at all like the character she plays.” Gascoyne says. “Kate doesn’t have a bad bone in her body.”
When Gascoyne’s Canadian Corrie chat tour lands in the west, it will be his second one to Canada. The first one in the Maritimes was a remarkable experience, and he was surprised by the responsiveness of the audiences and how much they love the show.
“When I walked on that stage I was really nervous. I thought, ‘How I was going to sustain this for two hours, talking about what I’d done as an actor and then Coronation Street’? We just went along and it seemed like 10 minutes because of the audiences’ enthusiasm for that show.
“All the Coronation Street actors who have been (on Canadian tour) say there’s nowhere like that,” he adds. “The best fans are in Canada and I’m not just saying that because I’m coming to Canada. Everybody who has done the Canadian tour or been to Canada will tell you that.”