Bethany Platt is set to face another devastating ordeal in Coronation Street as demons from her recent past come back to haunt her and she believes that a rowdy and sleazy client from the lapdancing club is her sexual abuser Nathan Curtis.
As Bethany starts work for a new boss at the club, she refuses to wear a skimpy bikini but as she stands up to her nasty manager, a stag group asks her over to do a dance for them. However, when they then get hands on, Bethany gets panicked and, seeing flashes of Nathan, she grabs a bottle and lashes out, glassing the groom in the face.
This will have significant consequences as Bethany will be arrested and faces a charge of GBH which could land her in prison. Ahead of the scenes airing, we caught up with Lucy Fallon, who plays her and she talked us through the dramatic developments as well as teasing what could happen next and giving her view on whether Bethany and Craig have a romantic future.
Can you take us through the horrible events at the lapdancing club this week?
Bethany’s friend Sam encourages her to go for an audition after the lapdancing club is taken over by new management so she decides to go back after she is rude to a customer in the salon and storms off. The new owner of the club is a bit sleazy and makes all of the girls wear skimpy bikinis. When she refuses to wear it and she comes out of the changing room wearing her own stuff, he starts having a go at her and there’s a big group of men from a stag party who call over and want Bethany to dance for them.
They’re all very drunk and hands on – and it makes her really anxious and stressed as they keep touching her even though she is telling them repeatedly not to. For a second, she thinks that the groom is Nathan, so she picks up a glass bottle and smashes it in his face…
Does this make her see the ugly side of lapdancing?
Yeah, she starts to see that the way she has been coping with everything that has happened to her wasn’t the best way and that she is still damaged from everything. She sees that the reason she ended up lapdancing was as a direct result of her being groomed and abused. She realises that she actually needs to go to counselling again and needs to find other ways to move on.
How does she feel after the glassing?
She thinks that she is going mad as she worries she will start seeing Nathan everywhere. There is a scene with Sarah where she worries that she is mentally ill and might end up in a hospital like her mum.
What could the consequences be – would she cope in prison?
Not very well, I don’t think. There is a chance that she will be charged with GBH. She now has to go to court and face that – and that will bring back all of the emotions and trauma from Nathan’s trial. In this period, she will really struggle as she is reliving everything. The fear of seeing Nathan and also having to go to court is really hard for her to deal with and she won’t really cope.
Are you glad that Corrie did this lapdancing storyline to show that Bethany’s ordeal still affects her?
If she’d have just come back from Italy and declared that she was fine now, it wouldn’t have made sense. I know from the people we spoke to and the charities that we worked with that this is a lifelong thing – it will stay with Bethany forever. She can’t just move on from it, it will always be there. It was important to show that she is still not okay and I think this was a clever route to go down.
Do you think Craig and Bethany have a romantic future?
Well at the moment, probably not. Bethany isn’t in the right place to have a relationship after everything that she has been through with men. Craig is different of course but he is a close friend and for now I think that’s all she can see him as. Bethany also discovers that Craig has his own mental health issues, that strengthens the friendships as they both appreciate what one another is going through. Whether or not a romance will continue is debatable but the friendship is really strong.
So it’s more important to show them as supporters of each others’ mental health struggles?
Definitely yeah. It’s also important to show that you can be friends with a boy – that you can be really close to someone and support each other without there having to be any kind of romance. If it then did develop into a romance long term, people might feel that they have earned it – if it does happen eventually.
What would you like to see next for Bethany?
I’m taking things as they come at the moment – obviously I would want Bethany to have happier storylines but I also like the grittier ones. I don’t know what is coming up but I would be more than happy with it if it happened to be another gritty story. I think we will start to see her trying to get her life back on track after this but what she has been through will always be there so I know it will be revisited again in the summer and that’s all to do with situations that she finds herself in that will have triggers. The key is that we don’t ever forget as Bethany will always have triggers in her life where it will come back.
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