Later this year, Evelyn Plummer of Coronation Street will have to bid farewell to fans as TV icon Dame Maureen Lipman steps away from the cobbles to embark on a new job.
Since 2018, the 78-year-old experienced actress has portrayed Tyrone Dobbs’ (Alan Halsall) grandma in the ITV serial opera.
In the course of her tenure as the show’s resident harridan, Evelyn has forced her way into the No. 9 Coronation Street house of her estranged grandson, rekindled her relationship with him, and developed a strong bond with Roy Cropper (David Neilson).
She has recently reconnected with her long-lost daughter Cassie Plummer (Claire Sweeney) and is supporting her in her fight against drug addiction.
She will, however, be trading in the Rovers for the stage later this year when she plays in the annual pantomime at Richmond Theatre.
“We are so excited to announce that Dame Maureen Lipman will star as Mrs. Potty and Pete Firman will play Silly Billy in this year’s spellbinding pantomime Beauty and the Beast!” the venue announced on Instagram last month.
A Dame in a Dame’s role? To us, that sounds wonderful!
However, the announcement has raised concerns that Maureen would be leaving Weatherfield after six years; don’t worry, though; she will return!
Upon being contacted for an interview, a representative verified to Metro.co.uk that Dame Maureen will be taking a leave of absence from Coronation Street at the end of the year. In 2025, we want to see her back on the cobblestones.
She’ll probably be gone for several months because the production is scheduled to run from December 7 to January 5.
As viewers will recall, Maureen has previously taken long pauses from her work. In fact, Evelyn had to send her daughter Cassie to rehab in order to accommodate Maureen’s absence from her West End role in “Rose” last year.
She poked fun at Corrie’s gloomy plots earlier this year and referred to the show’s early years, when her late husband, famed screenwriter Jack Rosenthal, wrote a lot of the show’s scripts.
She said on the Beyond the Title podcast, “We’ve reached a point in Corrie now where people are getting murdered in knicker factories.”
“There is domestic abuse here.” Anything that fits the mould of 21st-century societal issues will be featured in your neighbourhood soap opera.
‘But then you might put Martha [Longhurst], Minnie [Caldwell], and Ena [Sharples] in the snug and talk about Ben-Hur,’ the speaker went on.
Though it’s never been political, I enjoy it when women go seated and comment, “Oh, Donald Trump, isn’t his hair shocking?”
“People say things like that, and we accept them as fact.”
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