Coronation Street is welcoming back familiar face Tina O’Brien, but the actress wants to reassure fans that there is no bad blood between her and ex Ryan Thomas.
Tina and Ryan were a couple in real life as well as on the ITV soap, where she is about to return as Sarah-Louise Platt and he has continued playing Jason Grimshaw.
The actress, who shares six-year-old daughter Scarlett with her co-star, says: “Ryan has been really supportive. He knew [about my return] from the very early stages because I discussed it with him. He was really good about it and said, ‘I think it will be brilliant for you’.”
Sarah-Louise (Tina O’Brien) and Jason (Ryan Thomas) cosy up in Coronation Street alongside Bethany (Lucy Fallon) (ITV)
Tina also has a five-month-old son Beau with partner Adam Crofts. She says: “We are a very ‘modern family’. We spent Christmas morning all together this year for the first time. It was lovely.”
However, on screen things are a little more awkward as Sarah-Lou’s teenage daughter Bethany (Lucy Fallon) is stirring things between her mum and Jason.
Tina says: “She keeps telling Jason that Sarah has got a shrine of him, and he thinks that Sarah is still madly in love with him!”
Sarah-Louise (Tina O’Brien) is back in Corrie with daughter Bethany (Lucy Fallon) (ITV)
“I feel incredibly lucky to have been offered this opportunity," says Tina. "When I first started, I was 16 and had just left high school, and I left at 24, as I felt I really needed to branch out and see the world. It was almost like it was time to leave uni.
“Now, I’m older and feel I have tried different things. To be a working actress and to have a job in Manchester, and in something as massive as Coronation Street, I am very lucky and certainly don’t take it for granted.”
Coronation Street airs on ITV on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Sarah-Louise Platt returns on Monday, March 30.
