Exclusive: Corrie’s Jennie McAlpine refuses to rule out more kids as she teases future goal
Coronation Street favourite Jennie McAlpine has spoken about her love of babies, and the future TV show she'd love to present if offered
As a busy working mum who plays a busy working mum, it’s perhaps not surprising that the lines between Jennie McAlpine’s real life and her screen life as Coronation Street ’s Fiz Dobbs can sometimes become a bit blurred.
“Especially when I ran between scenes to my daughter’s sports day recently. I wasn’t sure whether I was going to make it, so I came as a hybrid – half Fiz, half Jennie,” the actress laughs.
“I was wearing Fiz’s new coat – it even said Fiz on the label. We shouldn’t really go out in them, but I didn’t have much time.
“When I got there my daughter Hilda said: ‘Who’s is that coat?’ I said: ‘It’s Fiz’s’. So, she got quite excited about it!’”
Jennie, 40, is mum to nine year-old Albert, five year-old Hilda and baby Doris, 16 months, with her equally busy restauranteur husband Chris.
To keep things running like clockwork the mirror of her dressing room at work is covered in notes, reminding her not only of her work schedule, but who is meant to be picking up which child from which activity on the different days of the week.
Yet despite already being run off her feet, Jennie hasn’t had enough of babies just yet.
“Some people love diamonds, I love babies!” she smiles.“It’s chaos at home and my dressing room mirror at work is literally covered with Post-It notes of things I need to do, but even so, I can’t promise we will pause now!”
She adds: “I love that TV programme 22 Kids & Counting. I can’t be like that, but there’s a long
way between three and 22, so I can’t definitely say: ‘no more.’
“I love work and I love being a mum too.”
Indeed, Jennie says – if the science was possible – she would never say no to another baby.
“If you ask me when I’m 80, I still wouldn’t be able to say no [to more]. I can’t do it, [the word] just won’t roll off my tongue!.” she laughs. “I can’t help it – if I hadn’t been an actor, I’d have loved to have been a midwife.”
Jennie returned to the Street four months ago after her maternity leave with little Doris.
But it’s only been this week that Fiz has been front and centre in a shocking huge storyline – when her husband Tyrone Dobbs’ former fling Alina Pop returned to Wetherfield….with a secret child in tow.
Viewers are now waiting to see if the boy is a half brother to 13 year-old Hope and 11 year-old Ruby, Tyrone ( Alan Halsall ) and Fiz’s children.
Yet it’s another of Fiz’s storylines with Hope (Isabella Flanagan) that has the actress most on edge – when Hope is given free condoms from the GP. Jennie hopes having onscreen teenagers will help her when she has to navigate such tricky situations with her own children, in the future.
“It’s not a storyline that me and Alan were ready to do,” Jennie laughs. “This feels very fast forward to us, we thought Ruby was still our little baby girl!
“My own children are still very young, so I’ve got all that to come, but at least I’ll be well practised at it. Children grow up so fast.
“Bella who plays Hope was going off to a Taylor Swift concert the other day.
“It’s quite funny at work at the moment because Alan really does behave like her dad.
“He’s literally like: ‘She can’t be going to Taylor Swift,’ and I say: ‘She can, Alan, she can.’ I’m trying to be the coolmum!
“But seeing my girls grow up on screen makes me want to keep my own children young forever.”
None of Jennie’s children watch her on screen. “Between all their activities and how many times Corrie is on, I don’t think we can commit as a family to being full-time viewers,” she explains. They know I’m on it, but it’s hard for Hilda to get her head round it.
“We had a Coronation Street Family and Friends’ Day, where cast and crew bring their loved ones to have a fun day out on the cobbles,” Jennie adds. “I took Hilda to the last one and we had a dog show, a fire engine and face painting.
“So, Hilda now thinks that I’m a firewoman and that every time I go to work, I have my face painted. It was very confusing for her. I said: ‘It’s not always like this Hilda, it’s just for you!’”
Bury-born Jennie was only 17 when she joined Coronation Street, 23 years ago. Having taken up amateur dramatics at the age of eight, she joined a local theatre workshop and in 1997, when she was 13, she entered a Young Comedian of the Year competition, coming second in the finals at London’s prestigious Comedy Store.
For the next four years she performed as a schoolgirl stand-up comedian at pubs and clubs around Lancashire, before landing a role in Emmerdale when she was 15, playing Michelle Morley, a schoolfriend of regular character Ollie Reynolds.
She left in 2000 and the following year landed the part of feisty Fiz, who was briefly fostered by Roy and Hayley Cropper, due to neglect by her mother Cilla.
Away from the cobbles she famously came 4th in the 2017 series of I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! And her love of competitions has also seen her take part in a host of game shows, including Richard Osman’s House of Games, Stephen Mulhern’s game show Rolling In It, Pointless Celebrities, Tipping Point and Countdown.
In addition she has been a guest panellist on Loose Women, but Jennie insists she has no plans to leave the Cobbles permanently to try other things.
“I love babies so much that I’d love to present a show like One Born Every Minute or Emma Willis: Delivering Babies, but my list at the moment, with the kids being so young, is definitely smaller and there are definitely stipulations,” she explains.
