With over 65 years on the cobbles under his belt, there’s bound to have been more than one storyline that Coronation Street icon William Roache disapproved of.
94 year old Roache has played Ken Barlow since the ITV soap’s inception in December 1960, and has appeared in almost 5,000 episodes during that time. It’s no surprise that the actor struggles to differentiate between his serial drama alter-ego and himself.
“It’s pseudo-method. If you’re playing a character that’s vastly different from yourself you’ve got all sorts of things to learn and do. I didn’t have that. I was just playing me as Ken Barlow,” he explained on the Session 7 podcast.
“In my book I don’t act, I just do, and I believe it. That’s it. I don’t think about acting at all. I just absorb, take it all in, feel that’s who I am, that’s what I’m doing, and do it.
“Over the years in Coronation Street, there’s only been a couple of times, one time in particular, when it hasn’t worked. That’s because I took it personally, I was personally involved. It wasn’t Ken, it was me doing this but under the name of Ken.”
His most famous stories include the love triangle with wife Deirdre and factory owner Mike Baldwin in 1983, his affair with Wendy Crozier six years later, and being left for dead by youngest son Daniel Osbourne (Rob Mallard) in 2017.
The pair were estranged for a number of years, after Daniel’s mum Denise (Denise Black) left Weatherfield for Scotland.
“Ken had an illegitimate child by a hairdresser and he was looking after this child on his own and was very protective of it, was fighting for it tooth and nail,” Roache continued.
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“Suddenly, not in just one episode, but in one scene, the mother of the child comes along and takes it away and he says ‘Okay’. I said, ‘I’m sorry, I just can’t do that.’ I’d been so involved with protecting, keeping and looking after this child, suddenly in one sentence.
“The producer said, ‘I’m sorry, it’s a bit sudden, I realise it.’ It was too late to change it’. That was a big wrench.
“I took them all personally. As an actor you shouldn’t do that, if you’re doing different parts all the time you’d be all over the place.
“I feel I’m Ken’s protector, I feel I’m looking after him. His caretaker rather than protector. That’s what I do.”
Roache also took time to address the changes to Corrie in recent years. It comes after creative director of continuing drama Iain MacLeod said that he didn’t want viewers to see any visual difference between Netflix’s Squid Game and ITV’s soap operas.
“Those early days were totally different,” Roache reflected.
“We all knew each other, we cared about each other. Nowadays the cast is just too big.”
He continued: “I think I prefer the method of filming that we do now where you just turn up and do your scenes. Before it was rehearse like a full play and then done like a full play. If there was one mistake in one film we had to go back and do a whole quarter up until the commercial break.
“So, from a technical point of view, I definitely prefer the system we have now. But each era I’ve been in has had its own special thing and I have just loved it.”
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Coronation Street airs weeknights at 8:30pm on ITV1 or can be streamed from 7am on ITVX.
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