Coronation Street spoilers follow.
Coronation Street star Jane Hazlegrove has explained why the soap has taken Bernie Winter-Alahan’s storyline in a dark new direction. Viewers will know that the character is facing a terrifying ordeal after taking drugs in a hotel room with sinister new stranger Mal Roper.
The newcomer has since been hassling her, with things set to get more fraught next week when Bernie is arrested after Mal is found with a head injury – though whether she is the culprit remains to be seen.
Opening up about Bernie’s darker turn recently, Jane noted that the show hasn’t really looked into her character’s grief over the loss of son Paul in 2024 and the death of son-in-law Billy Mayhew. She suggested that both tragedies had been a catalyst for Bernie’s downward spiral of late.
“I was pleased that we were going to go there, because as we all know, we all have to experience it as we go through life,” she explained. “She’d buried it for the last 18 months, Billy being the absolute catalyst. He was a tiny piece of Paul and that just compounded everything.
“And she’d been there for everyone else, hadn’t she? At the same time, she had all the stuff with finding Kit, and then all the stuff happening with Brody. And she was spread very thin.”
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Jane continued: “She was sort of sticking plasters on all sorts, I think. But, as we all know, grief doesn’t have any rules. It’s just going to come and get you whenever it can, and that is what happened with Bernie.”
Of course, Bernie hasn’t told husband Dev the full story about her decision to do drugs, with him currently unaware that she was in a room with Mal.
Jane admitted that it is “always a half-truth with her”, and that “all her life she’s had to tell lies because she’s not been a good mum”. She further noted that Bernie has never “experienced kindness like” she has with Dev.
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Further praising her character, the actor said: “She’s a survivor. And I think that’s very much a working-class thing as well.
“You want to keep her edges. I love it that they write that for her, it’s a real thrill to go, ‘Oh, no, what’s she done now?'”
Coronation Street airs on weeknights at 8.30pm on ITV1 and streams on ITVX.
Read more Coronation Street spoilers on our dedicated homepage
For exclusive soap star interviews, gossip, spoilers and theories every week, don’t miss the Soap Scoop podcast from Inside Soap magazine. The latest episode delves into next week’s soap spoilers for EastEnders, Coronation Street and Emmerdale – featuring an unexpected pregnancy, dark new alliances, and secretive newcomers causing chaos on the cobbles.