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The Barlows are about to become a major force on the show again. Exciting times.
Is it news of the stroke that brings them back?
Kate: Yes it is, basically when Ken suffers his stroke, Peter as we saw, has a bit of a secret to keep there in that he triggered it. When Tracy finds that out, she’s not very happy so she gives him the job of calling around all friends and family and telling them the news, so it brings the boys over. So Adam has come over from Canada and Daniel’s been living elsewhere in the forest with his mum, Denise. They are coming back ostensibly to see Ken, but there may be other reasons they’re back as well. But it’s all a big secret…
Rob, were you nervous about joining such an iconic soap family?
Rob: Very, but excited at the same time because the audition process was so enjoyable [Rob auditioned with Chris Gascoyne, who plays Peter], it was a lot of fun and I immediately thought I really wanted to do it. So yes I am nervous about it but more excited about it.
Sam, you’ve been in the show before. After your last stint, did you assume that was the end of your Corrie experience?
Sam: Yes it’s funny, I was speaking to Rob about this last week, I think whenever you leave, you half expect the character to die on screen and then you’re not left that dilemma, but my character left in the back of a taxi so the door I felt was always potentially open to come back. But I think the longer it goes without it happening, you think it’s not going to happen, so when the opportunity arose this summer, it was quite a surprise.
Did you have to re-audition?
Sam: Yes, I did a screen test with Chris which was nice because I wasn’t quite sure whether it would fit for myself as much as those guys wanting to see me as well, I think I’m very different as an actor compared to when I left the show. I class myself as an actor now whereas when I left, I felt like I was a trainee or a runner of some kind, I was pretty useless wasn’t I!? So yes, it was good to do that because I felt a lot more confident and secure as a performer but I was back in this old environment, which brought back memories of being the opposite. So it was nice to actually be able to express myself a bit more and I felt a that okay, maybe this will work.
Has he got more of an edge to him this time?
Sam: Yeah, I think the character’s more fully formed, I was telling Rob this week, when the character first came to the show, no-one knew even what his second name was, sometimes I’d get a script and it would be Adam Baldwin and then the next week it would be Adam Barlow. One minute, I think the idea was that he was going to be a bit of a cool kid, a hit with the ladies, and then the next minute he was a little bit bookish and a bit nerdy, I don’t think anyone quite had an idea what to do with him and I felt that really.
I never got the momentum going from that beginning and ultimately decided it would be best if I left. So for it to come back again, I wanted to have assurances that it was going to be a lot more fully formed and a lot more involved and already that’s clearly happened, so for me it’s a lot more exciting to be here this time than it was last time.
Is there a relationship between the two boys already?
Rob: No pre-existing relationship so it’s all brand new, which has been fun.
Sam: Yes it’s been fun, it’s been quite natural hasn’t it? Rob and I first met on our first day filming and the scenes I think were written before they’d cast us. I think obviously as actors become more involved in the show, then the writers start writing for the actors. So what we would bring was basically what was just on the page and it was just us as actors naturally sparring off each other. We were half wanting to punch each other, weren’t we?
Rob: Yeah, just bring it out!
So Daniel is Adam’s uncle…?
Kate: Yeah, and it makes me laugh a lot that Adam can call him Uncle Daniel just to wind him up. The interesting thing that I found when we talking about bringing the boys in was that sense that Adam is Mike’s son and Daniel’s is Ken’s son. And the tradition of Corrie was Ken v Mike and here we have fresh new versions of both those personalities so that’s what we wanted to bring into the show really, that they are very, very different and Ken sort of holds the family together – sometimes not ever so well.
Daniel’s certainly hardly seen his father and Adam’s hardly seen his grandfather so it’s not the strong family that Ken might like to think it is. But I love that idea of mini-Mike, but fresh and modern with his own kind of swagger and a mini-Ken with his own baggage and view of life as well. I think that’s a really nice dynamic to bring to the Street. Mini-Mike may arrive in a Jaguar, a little homage!
Can you tell us anything about what they’re going to get up to on the Street?
Kate: Well in true Ken fashion, Daniel is a student, he’s an academic, so he’s still at University. And Adam has trained as a solicitor over in Canada, so he’s got a little bit of legal knowledge. He’s also got a lot of ambition, not unlike his father, so he’ll be bringing a bit of that to the Street.
And who will Adam be getting involved with?
Kate: All the pretty ladies. It’s interesting because obviously Adam has more history, so he has pre-existing relationships with quite a few people in the Street. He’s got some grudges against the Connors because he’s sold his section of the business to the Connor family for not a lot of money – they sort of swindled him a little bit really. So although Liam Connor’s no longer on the Street, he has that grudging relationship with them. They’re building family relationships, really. Daniel is yet to get to know Peter and Tracy and even his father, really. He’s never had these relationships before so he’s building all of those from scratch. Adam’s got more to go on there, certainly with Peter. But it’s nice to see those Barlow bonds growing.
Daniel’s a bit more shy, and we will be growing some nice relationships for him as time goes on, but I might keep those a secret…
Are they sticking around?
Kate: They’re never allowed to leave,
I’m keeping them forever! I’m super-excited. The reason I wanted these guys back is because I wanted to strengthen that family dynasty. I think that the show needed that and when you’re working on the country’s longest-running show, and this is the longest-running family, you strengthen it and there’s no bringing in the secret son that no-one knew existed or the secret sibling.
These people already exist and have been seen in one way shape or form and have all that great history already which is there for the taking, so it’s just a case of bringing it to the show and deciding what they’d done over the last few years and months and making sure that their back stories and biogs were nice and rich and they’d turned up with a secret or two.
So we’re talking major dysfunctional shenanigans?
Kate: Oh God yeah! It’s a little bit like Ken Lear.
That’s very much what we were thinking, that because Ken is at an age now where he is thinking about his mortality and the fact that he’s had a stroke will compound that massively. He loves his children and his grandchildren, but he hasn’t necessarily done right by them all the time, he’s not necessarily been brilliant or been exemplary.
They’ve certainly got baggage of their own. But I think ultimately they all still have desires to be there and be part of that family and look for a root and a home. So there’s lots of nice conflicting layers, things that people can really relate to on a very day to day level – but we’ll be adding a nice splash of drama in there, too, which will hopefully elevate it from the everyday.
How will they interact with Tracy?
Kate: She thinks that Daniel is really weird and really nerdy and really bookish, and like a mini-Ken which she doesn’t think is necessarily a good thing. And I think she thinks Adam’s more glitzy and more fun and a bit more worth hanging out with. They know each other of old, as well, so there’s a bit of an existing relationship there.
Are there any plans to bring back Daniel’s mum?
Kate: You’ll have to keep watching! (jokingly) She’ll be bringing Zak Dingle back with her, that soap cross over everyone’s always saying we’re gonna do…
Where are they all going to live?
Kate: No.1 – but they won’t be at number one for long, we’ve sorted out the geography, we’re fine, we’re good. There is sometimes a little bit of artistic licence with how many people we shoe-horn into those properties. They’re going to be room mates on their own really, which is quite a nice dynamic. They’re going to be the odd couple.
Can you give us any hint as we get towards Christmas, what might be happening in the Barlow household?
Kate: Well as we get towards Christmas, there’s a lot of them sorting out the dynamics of their relationships. Peter has come back with a bit of a secret. We see that he’s come back with a bit of an injury, we’ve seen that he’s got no money and we saw that he went to meet somebody in the middle of the night and possibly wasn’t completely honest about who, so there are little clues there. You’ll see in the next episodes that his bond with Leanne is still pretty strong and that he’s still very fond of her.
She’s obviously in a very different place now, she’s pregnant and she’s with Nick so maybe she’s in a very different headspace to him. But there’s going to be a story for him which these guys will be involved with. It’s about people trying to work out their relationships with Ken, and him maybe not handling that ever so well. And as we pass through up to Christmas and the beginning of next year, we’ll see cracks forming in the family which could prove quite dangerous. These are the building blocks of stories into winter.
Rob, you had a stint in Emmerdale – did that give you a flavour of how the soap machine works?
Rob: Yes, it did, it was the three episodes last summer. They were the first consistent blocks that I’d done on something, and I was working with John Bowe, who was great. We’d be talking about anything random and he’d just come over and say ‘If you just turn your head ever so slightly’ – technique and things like that but just for me, not pointing it out in front of the rest of the crew, which I very much appreciated.
Kate: He was working with a director called Tracey Rooney at the time and obviously I was at Emmerdale at the time and when we were in the viewings, Tracey said to me “Watch him, and if you don’t cast him in something, someone else will.” So she spotted you first, she was always a champion of him, really enjoyed working with him.
Have you been given any tips about handling the recognition side of things?
Rob: Well yes, Chris took me out for a drink and basically I just had to see how he handled it. I think everyone responds differently to it, I don’t know.
Sam: Don’t take the tram!
Rob: I’m still anonymous. I have been thinking about it.
Did Chris get a lot of people coming up to him when you were out?
Rob: Yes, but all nice, people just recognising him and saying they watch the show and can I have a picture. One’s never enough but he’s really courteous about it.
Are your family a bit giddy about you getting the part?
RM: Giddy is one way of putting it. They were away at the time, they were abroad, I was on my own so I had no-one to celebrate with. My grandma has watched it ever since the very first episode and was always saying that that was what I should be going for, go for Coronation Street.
Sam, did you have to have a crash course box set?
Sam: Yeah, I had to do a crash course, Sky plus back up for about a week. I actually said to Kate that my mum is always my reference for soaps and I trust her eye, and I watched all the soaps back and I said to my mum, ‘I think Emmerdale’s a bit better than Corrie at the moment’ and she went ‘Yeah, it’s Emmerdale’s producer that’s moving to Corrie.’ I was like ‘Aah, that’s alright then.’
I told her the first day I met her. I thought Emmerdale was fantastic when I watched it and I thought Corrie was a bit lacklustre and I was a bit concerned about the direction it was going in, so when I heard that Kate was coming in and it was her going to be editing, I was more excited about the prospect of coming back.
What do you think Corrie was lacking?
Sam: I don’t know if it was necessarily lacking something, I just thought the episode of Emmerdale outshone it really, that was my personal opinion. I’ve been in America a lot the last few years and I’ve been out of the loop. I sound like I’m really buttering her up, genuinely it’s the honest truth because for me watching it. Most jobs I’ve done, we’re starting the job with the rest of the production so what’s on the page is all you can gauge as far as doing your job.
But with this, you can watch it and you can see “okay, well this is the show I might possibly be joining” and I was a little bit underwhelmed by what I saw, but then having discovered that Kate was in charge of Emmerdale and she was moving over, I thought the synergy here is perfect for me, and hopefully I’ll be proved right.
Is it right that you’ve watched some Mike Baldwin scenes or you’re trying to?
Sam: Yeah, I’m trying to get some footage of Mike. I remember Johnny Briggs quite well, he’s quite a hard character to forget, but moreso I wanted to revisit his early days in the show, when he first arrived when he was younger, obviously I worked with him when he was a bit older. It’s such a different monster the soap world in the sense of the amount of pages per episode, it’s dialogue, dialogue, dialogue, and I felt that the episode of Emmerdale had a bit more air in it, a bit more space. I just think this show under Kate, for me personally, will be a lot more exciting and a lot more interesting, so I hope that’s the case all over the country.
Both these characters are single when they arrive. Who would you like to see them paired off with?
Rob: Without giving anything away…It feels important that Daniel is single for a while. Because of his history, there are certain points in development where he would be stuck, it would be a bottle neck, so it’s important from those positions that he’s not got an eye on that field for that kind of thing.
Does Daniel have any ulterior motive about coming to Weatherfield?
Kate: He’s certainly not completely honest about what’s been happening over the last few years when he arrives…
http://metro.co.uk/2016/11/08/corona...rrive-6235978/
