Julie Hesmondhalgh is a national treasure, and there isn’t two ways about it; not least because of her ground breaking role as Hayley Cropper in Coronation Street.
Becoming the first ever full-time transgender character of any soap, Julie took a character that was initially intended to be a one-note – and rather classless – joke, and turned her into one of the nations most beloved characters.
With her role in the latest series of Celebrity Traitors comes more press obligations, and a taxi ride to a recent interview saw Julie’s decision to cut alcohol out of her life reinforced.
Julie explained to the interviewer that she had ‘absolutely cringed’ during the journey there, when the taxi driver who was driving her to the interview told her that he had taken her somewhere before, causing her to tell him that she was ‘sorry if [she] was horrible’, reasoning that there was a ‘good chance’ she could have been in a ‘total state’ if it had come before her decision to go sober.
She further elaborated on her relationship with alcohol: ‘It’s hard when you’ve grown up in the eighties and nineties as a working-class northerner because it was such a big part of the culture.
‘The thought of driving somewhere and not being able to have a drink was just anathema to me, but some of my worst experiences in life have involved alcohol.
Continuing to talk with The Times on what eventually pushed her into knocking the booze on the head, she said: ‘And then, in 2018, my niece got ovarian cancer and that really, really rocked me, that shook me to my core.’
Julie was eliminated early from Celebrity Traitors, admitting: ‘I have to say it’s harder than I thought.
‘I know how intense these experiences can be, and I know that in the business, especially when you’re doing a play or a TV series, you make accelerated friendships.
‘There’s no small talk, you’re straight in with the big stuff. You bond with people and connect with people very quickly, so, when you get thrown under the bus…I was ready for it, but it was a bit hard.
‘The fact that I thought that in any universe I could be a Traitor is ridiculous – I knew I didn’t have it in me
‘If Claudia had picked me, I would have been terrible, because they’d say, right, who shall we murder? And I would have been like, I can’t let somebody like Ross with his big puppy eyes get murdered tonight, or Sharon, absolutely not!’
Who was Julie Hesmondhalgh in Coronation Street?
After a first date with eventual soulmate, Roy Cropper (David Neilson), he panicked and broke things off with her after learning that she was a trans woman, before realising his mistake, and the two became a legendary soap power-couple, eventually having a blessing ceremony due to the UK not legally recognising trans peoples true gender at the time and not allowing them to marry.
After fostering Fiz Dobbs (Jennie McAlpine), the early seeds of a life-long feud with resident she-devil Tracy Barlow (Kate Ford) were sown when she drugged Roy, claiming he slept with her and she’d gotten pregnant, later selling the baby to the couple, before reclaiming her and revealing she was actually Steve McDonald’s (Simon Gregson).
After the discovery – and rejection – of her a son, Hayley headed to Africa to do some volunteer work, returning to marry her long-time love, Roy, after the law changed to legally recognise Hayley as her true gender, with the duo forging a strong relationship with another tearaway in Becky McDonald (Katherine Kelly).
Tragically, with Julie’s decision to depart from the show, show bosses determined that there was no way she’d ever leave Roy, and conceived a pancreatic cancer plot that would ultimately see her perish, and after gruelling rounds of chemotherapy, she was told her cancer was terminal.
Launching into achieving everything on her bucket list, Hayley eventually decided that she wanted to die with dignity and control, telling Roy that she intended to take her own life when the time came, something he deeply disapproved of but vowed to remain by her side, as ever, until the end.
As she silently said her goodbyes to her loved ones, Hayley took a lethal cocktail of medication at home, dying in the arms of Roy and bringing an end to her story.