Coronation Street boss hints at more villains after Stephen Reid exit
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Coronation Street spoilers follow.
Coronation Street producer Iain MacLeod has hinted at the prospect of more villains following the exit of Stephen Reid.
The serial killer will depart the show during next week’s Super Soaps Week, though we don’t know if Todd Boyce’s character will pay for his crimes or escape justice.
Ahead of the dramatic week on the ITV soap, MacLeod spoke with Digital Spy and other media about Stephen’s final scenes, teasing that he certainly won’t be the last bad egg to set foot on the cobbled streets.
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“All stories need an antagonist otherwise everybody just bumbles along being nice to each other. There’s a limit to how many of those scenes I can watch – well, I say that, it sounds like classic Corrie stuff that I would love to watch,” he began.
“People need obstacles to their happiness. If you don’t have one in your show, you struggle to find those moments of high drama and you end up with external factors landing on people.
“Those are all brilliant stories and we’ve got several brilliant examples of them in our show at the moment, but a villain just comes in and instantly starts a story out of thin air if you want them to, which is exactly what’s happened with Stephen.”
Stephen’s crime spree, which has seen him murder several business rivals, has won acclaim with critics and audiences, and MacLeod compared the storyline favourably with Corrie villains of the past.
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“It’s up there - it’s entirely unique,” he surmised. “What I’ve liked about watching Stephen is you could try and find parallels between previous iconic Corrie bad guys, but I think he’s entirely of his own genre.
“I’m reminded of Alan Rickman, who was apparently once asked why he always played villains, and he somewhat prickly replied, ‘Oh, I don’t play villains, I play very interesting people’. That’s how Todd [has] approached it and how we’ve approached it in the writing.
“We’ve watched that evolve and we’ve rooted it all in this man’s massive, fragile ego. I think he’s entirely unique and will go on to be entirely iconic. The story, the character and the performance from Todd has just been up there with my very favourite Corrie villains.”
Coronation Street airs on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 8pm on ITV1 and streams on ITVX.
Read more Coronation Street spoilers on our dedicated homepage
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