Homeless and on the Street
Coronation Street fans will be shocked to see happy-go-lucky Sean Tully sleeping on the streets, but, as actor Antony Cotton knows all too well, it can happen to anyone. He tells Georgia Humphreys about his personal connection to the storyline, and why ou
My friend did it for six months and it nearly killed him
ALL soaps need some comic relief and, for 15 years, Antony Cotton has been bringing exactly that to Weatherfield. But it’s the Bury-born actor’s turn for a darker storyline this summer, as Coronation Street tackles the issue of homelessness. His much-loved character, Sean Tully, hits rock bottom after he loses all of his employment, has to move out of Fiz and Tyrone’s house and is then kicked out by Liz. And heartbreaking scenes to be aired on ITV next week show him waking up cold and scared in a car park, having slept in a tent he stole from bins. “This one has been unusual - we’ve never done this storyline before,” remarks Antony, 42, who found fame in groundbreaking gay drama Queer As Folk. “I’ve loved doing the serious stuff. The one thing I hope people will take from it is it can happen to anyone.” Discussing how Sean finds himself in this situation, he elaborates: “Everybody has their own issues, whether that’s they’ve not got a spare room or they’re going through a divorce. And every avenue seems to be a dead end. “He shrugs his shoulders and goes: ‘There’s not much I can do.’ He thinks it’s for one night, then it turns out it’s not that.” Antony has been part of Corrie firsts before - upon joining the show in 2003, Sean was the only out and proud character on the cobbles (Antony himself is also openly gay). But Sean being forced to sleep on the streets is arguably the star’s biggest story yet. And the fact that it’s eerily similar to the experience of someone he knows in real life has made it even more poignant for Antony. While filming ITV reality show Dancing On Ice last winter, he received a message on Facebook from a friend saying: “Can you help me? I’ve got nobody else to turn to, I’m homeless.” “I did all the classic things that everybody does - the idea that all homeless people are on drugs or there’s something wrong with them,” Antony admits sadly. “I was thinking, ‘What could have possibly got you into this position?’ When I knew him he had a missus, two kids, an Audi on the drive and was self-employed.” He booked the man, who had been living in a tent in a stairwell in a council block, into a room at a Manchester Travelodge. And outgoing and chatty Antony is visibly emotional when recalling what the man looked like when he first saw him. “I walked into the room and internally burst out crying because he was about eight stone and looked very ill - when I knew him he was a unit.
“He’d lost everything - everything had been robbed off him. He had no front teeth, where he’d been beaten up.” It was far from easy, but, luckily, the man (who Antony never names) is now getting back on his feet. With the actor’s help, he visited various organisations across Manchester, before one of them put him into a private house. “Once he had an address, he was able to unlock the social benefits and he got an emergency payment like that,” Antony explains with a click of his fingers. “I realised to go to these places - and he had to go every day - was 12 miles walk, in freezing weather. It’s no wonder people give up. Because I was in my car we shot between places and got everything in place.” Now, he says, his friend has a job with a construction company that he found via Barnabus, a volunteer-led organisation based in Manchester. Antony insists it’s purely a coincidence he is now exploring the issue of homelessness on Corrie - he’d kept his friend’s situation secret from everyone at work. But when he read the scripts, “very spookily it was the identical story”. “I was doing the research without knowing,” he exclaims. “It’s a monstrous beast being homeless, horrific. I’ve sat in crack clinics and places I never thought I’d be sat in a million years, all because of trying to access help for somebody.” He adds candidly: “Because I’ve got a big gob I was able to knock on doors and I’d say, ‘I’m not leaving here until we’re sorted.’ “He’s always said he’s lucky it was me because I am that gobby idiot. It broke my heart thinking of all the people that don’t have anybody to either physically lift them up, or emotionally support them.” While there will be some lighter moments - “Sean-isms,” as Antony puts it - in the Coronation Street storyline, viewers can expect to see the character in a dark place for a “good few months”. He gets mugged at one point, and ends up in a “homeless village”, where he meets a woman called Carol. “The eye-opener for Sean is she says she’s been doing it [being homeless] on and off for nearly four years,” he explains. “My friend did it for six months and it nearly killed him. He said he would have died because he was so cold and fragile.” While there’s no doubt this is a tough topic to tackle, Antony is loving the opportunity to raise awareness of the struggles homeless people face. “What’s been a real joy is sometimes shows - not necessarily this show - do issue-based storylines, and you can tell it’s purely to drive traffic to a website. “Sometimes you see those stories played out and something doesn’t ring true about it. What I’ve loved about this is it’s all true.” Watch Coronation Street on weeknights on ITV