Maureen Lipman is to join the cast of Coronation Street, playing an “outspoken battleaxe” on the long-running soap.
The actor and comedian will star as Evelyn Plummer, the grandmother of Tyrone Dobbs. She will be introduced to the soap after Tyrone begins to research his family history and will clash with his wife, Fiz.
“I am beyond thrilled that we are introducing such a great new character, played by someone of Maureen’s pedigree,” said Coronation Street producer Iain MacLeod.
“Evelyn is eye-wateringly withering and will add a fresh dollop of northern humour to the show as she turns Tyrone and Fiz’s lives upside down.”
It will not the first time Lipman has appeared on the cobbles. She enjoyed a brief stint in the soap in 2007 as Lilian Spencer, a relief manager at the Rovers Return pub. The actor’s late husband, Jack Rosenthal, who died in 2004, also worked on Coronation Street, writing some of the soap’s early episodes.
Lipman, who recently adapted Rosenthal’s TV film The Knowledge for the stage, said that she considered turning down the role as it clashed with a run of performances at this month’s Edinburgh festival fringe.
“I got the call from Coronation Street and I thought: ‘I can’t do this, because I’ve got a show,’” she told BBC One’s Breakfast.
“I’ve got a picture of my late husband, a triptych, and there are lights above it. And I was saying: ‘I don’t think I can do it’, and then the light came on – above his picture. So I thought: ‘OK,’ and I am now a character in the Street – and a pretty nasty one at that. I’m playing a monster.”
Lipman’s Edinburgh show, entitled Up for It, will mark her first appearance on the fringe in 50 years. It is billed as “an evening of rave, rollick and rant”.
