Coronation Street’s Jennie McAlpine promises “explosive spectacle” for 60th anniversary

Coronation Street star Jennie McAlpine - who is known for playing Fiz Brown on the long running soap - tells us the diamond celebration is going to be pretty "explosive".

Speaking exclusively to RadioTimes.com, Jennie said: "I think everyone’s kind of proud that we got back to this and we won’t have to let the viewers down and it’s still going to be a brilliant, explosive spectacle to watch."

Although the producers are pulling out all the stops to make the anniversary special, it's only been made possible through change due to coronavirus guidelines and social distancing restrictions.

"Things have had to change because they were big and they had no measures in place," Jennie explained.

Revealing how the writers have had to alter scripts to take the current climate into consideration, she continued: "I think they’re working hard to really make it. So they’ve had to change the plan, but tweak them and cleverly change them.

"I think it’s pretty dramatic and it involves quite a few characters. I think that that’s what everyone is proud of."

From Monday 14th September, Coronation Street went back to airing six episodes a week instead of two during the early stages of lockdown.

Being able to get back to this point set precedence for the anniversary, with Jennie saying: "Everyone was so pleased to get six episodes back. This is really amazing and a testament to the crew who have really worked hard at doing it."

She continued: "This is start of us being able to ramp things up and be a bit more ambitious with the way we’ve filmed or written some of the scenes.

"The writers have really had to think differently. It’s not just two metres, we’ve also not had big ensembles. We’d never think anything of having 40 people in a room before, so we’ve had to think cleverly about that."

Recently, Fiz's daughter Hope been displaying signs of her father John Stape's (Graeme Hawley) troubled behaviour.

This has been caused a lot of disruption in Fiz's household with her partner Tyrone Dobbs, his daughter Ruby, and grandmother Evelyn Plummer.

So what can we expect for Fiz this anniversary?

"So, she's still living with the grandmother and the kids are back. We haven’t been filming with the kids yet, but they are making plans to bring them back," Jennie said.

"Hope hasn't really got any better. We keep thinking she’s less naughty but I’m not sure she is. I’m pretty sure there’ll be some wreaking havoc from her quite soon. Basically, I’ll be tearing my hair out again!"

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