{"id":423728,"date":"2026-01-19T18:13:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T18:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/423728\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T18:13:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T18:13:09","slug":"coronation-street-confirms-ken-barlows-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/423728\/","title":{"rendered":"Coronation Street confirms Ken Barlow’s future"},"content":{"rendered":"

Coronation Street<\/a>‘s William Roache has been playing Ken Barlow since has was 28 years old, and has long held the title of longest-serving actor in a television soap. And while he might not appear as much on screen nowadays<\/a>, he isn’t going away either.<\/p>\n

The soap’s boss Iain MacLeod told the Daily Star<\/a> that Roache will never be written out of the soap as long as he’s alive and willing to continue, although he admitted there had been exit stories pitched.<\/p>\n

“William Roache has been in the show since episode 1,” he said, adding: “William has a job for as long as he wants it\u2026 absolutely.<\/p>\n

“I mean, it would be a brave producer [who takes] the decision to axe him.<\/p>\n

“William [is] a miraculous individual. Whatever you give him, even now, he’s on point, he’s on his dialogue\u2026 He’s the most professional member of the cast. I don’t think anyone could dispute that.”<\/p>\n

\"ken<\/p>\n

ITV<\/p>\n

Related: Best streaming services<\/a><\/p>\n

On the topic of people proposing dropping Ken from the show, MacLeod humorously explained that it became a way for cheeky scamps to derail meetings.<\/p>\n

“Years ago at meetings, one of the writers would mischievously suggest bumping off Ken and things would descend into an argument,” he recalled.<\/p>\n

“And then someone would say, ‘Forget it, let\u2019s just go to the pub’.<\/p>\n

“So staff used to suggest getting rid of Ken to destroy meetings so everyone could go to the pub.”<\/p>\n

\"ken<\/p>\n

ITV<\/p>\n

Related: Coronation Street’s Tanisha Gorey shares major real-life update<\/a> <\/p>\n

Roache himself has stated multiple times over the years that<\/a> he has no intention to leave Corrie, although he did admit to having his eye on the door due to wanting to do films<\/a> and finding that Ken had gotten a bit “nerdy”<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last year, he also spoke about<\/a> how he had a feud with a co-star for a while, before becoming very close friends.<\/p>\n

Coronation Street airs on weeknights at 8.30pm on ITV1 and streams on ITVX<\/a> and YouTube<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Read more Coronation Street spoilers on our dedicated homepage<\/a><\/p>\n

For exclusive soap star interviews, gossip, spoilers and theories every week, don’t miss the Soap Scoop podcast<\/a> from Inside Soap magazine. This week’s episode<\/a> features a chat with Coronation Street star Jacob Roberts, who plays Kit Green.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coronation Street‘s William Roache has been playing Ken Barlow since has was 28 years old, and has long…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":423729,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,428,222757,430,134,429,222756,427],"class_list":{"0":"post-423728","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-content-type-news","11":"tag-contentid-0bc1f8ea-8257-4e7c-8c31-488e208cac03","12":"tag-displaytype-standard-article","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-locale-gb","15":"tag-shorttitle-corrie-confirms-ken-barlows-future","16":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}