SOAP SECRET: Coronation Street Legend Julie Hesmondhalgh Reveals Transgender Hayley Cropper Was Initially Intended for a Joke Storyline
She also shared what it meant to her to play a transgender character
CORONATION Street legend Julie Hesmondhalgh has revealed that her character Hayley Cropper was initially introduced as part of a joke storyline.
Julie was a regular on Corrie for over a decade, during which time her character married Roy Cropper (David Neilson) and became a soap-fan favourite – but her role on the soap was originally meant to be much smaller and part of a joke played on Roy.
Hayley first appeared on the soap in 1998 and was a regular fixture in Weatherfield until her on-screen death in 2014.
Her biggest storyline was her relationship with and eventual marriage to Roy.
Although they were not always the most affectionate couple, they enjoyed a happy life together.
However, this was almost not the case. Speaking on a soap panel at the Edinburgh TV Festival on Wednesday (21 August), Julie revealed that her character was only meant to appear as a joke, though she didn’t know it at the time.
“The casting director took me and said this was the deal with the character. She was going to be trans … [but] I didn’t know until later was that it was actually just going to be a joke storyline,” Julie explained.
She continued: “Roy had sort of embedded himself in the show as a popular – if slightly strange character – and he was going to have a series of disastrous dates, of which Hayley was the first.
“The punchline of this story was that she would take him for dinner and say ‘I’m trans,’” after which Roy would consider the date to be a disaster and “disappear into the distance.”
But somewhere along the line, the plan for Julie’s character changed and Roy and Hayley ended up falling in love.
They got married unofficially in 1999 and again in 2010, at which time their union was legally acknowledged following the Gender Recognition Act of 2004.
Julie praised Corrie for wanting to take on a transgender storyline as she felt the soap often shied away from the “issues.”
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But telling an important story was something that meant a lot to her and something she always wanted to do as an actress.
“To be in a soap that was dealing with an issue that might change things, it was something that was really, really close to my heart,” she said.
“I knew that it would be an issue that I was a cis-gendererd person playing a trans character, even back then I knew that.
“But I also knew that in the temperature of those times, which unfortunately is the temperature of these times now too, that the stress and the press decimation of the actor playing that part if they were trans would be just horrific.
