Former Coronation Street star Will Mellor has explained why Harvey Gaskell won’t be returning to the cobbles.
Drug lord Harvey, played by Mellor, was introduced in 2021. When Simon Barlow was recruited into Harvey’s gang, Leanne Battersby worked with the police to bring down the villain.
After escaping from a prison van during the weeklong ‘Horror-Nation Street’ special, Harvey tried to murder Leanne. Instead, he ended up killing Natasha Blakeman.
Harvey returned in 2022, when Natasha’s son Sam visited him in prison. He reprised his role again, earlier this year. However, the actor says he won’t be making any more appearances on the show.
“I don’t like to overdo things, and when I first played Harvey it was going in for [the special]. And I thought that was gonna be the end,” Mellor told the Mirror.
“[Then] they said ‘we want him to come back for a bit’ so I looked at the storyline and it was about [Sam] wanting to ask questions why he’d killed his mum and why he behaved the way he behaved. I thought that was really interesting. It was like this tough exterior guy and he gets unpacked by this young kid, and he makes him look at himself.”
Mellor explained that although Sam “got under [Harvey’s] skin”, he doesn’t feel there’s much left to explore within the storyline.
“I think I’ve done everything I need to do with it, and sometimes you can do too much and keep going back. And it sort of weakens the character and weakens the storyline, and I don’t want to do that. Sometimes it’s better to leave it where it is.”
Despite not wanting to reprise his role, Mellor described his time on Corrie “like a ticking off a box that you really wanted to tick and I’d never been able to”.
