Coronation Street’s Stephen kills again in second murder

By Stefania Sarrubba

Published: Tuesday, 10 January 2023 at 12:00 am

It was just a matter of time before Coronation Street‘s new villain Stephen Reid would kill again.

The disgraced businessman, played by Todd Boyce, went bad at the end of last year to try to cover up his financial troubles.

After he accidentally killed Leo Thompkins (Joe Frost) in a heated confrontation, Stephen’s web of lies spread out, with things taking a turn when his victim’s father Teddy (Grant Burgin) came to Weatherfield to investigate.

In new scenes, Stephen will finish what he started before Christmas when he tried to take Teddy off his life support at the hospital. As the latter wakes up from his coma, Stephen has to make a risky decision: he murders Teddy.

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Todd Boyce as Stephen Reid in Coronation Street.
ITV

Boyce revealed he has known Stephen would make a second victim all along. Speaking with producer Iain MacLeod, the actor was informed his character wouldn’t stop at Leo.

“Then [Iain] said there will be another murder at some point – it has come sooner than I expected,” he explained.

“He’s gonna try everything he can to talk Teddy down and talk Teddy around. He knows that if that doesn’t work, he’s probably going to have to kill him. With Leo, he was just hiding financial malfeasance, that’s why he wanted to not report Leo’s kind of accidental death.

“But now that he’s got one body down, he’s perfectly willing to cover that up with another murder.”

This begs the question as to whether Stephen will add yet another victim to his kill list, particularly as MacLeod has previously teased a head-to-head with Underworld owner Carla Connor (Alison King).

Boyce confirmed that Carla is “skating on thin ice” belittling Stephen.

“Carla’s getting on his wick. She’s humiliated him on two occasions in front of his former colleagues when he was a bigwig in Milan and they’ve wandered into Underworld or into his business, and I keep pretending I’m just doing some consultancy work and she’s got me out the back in packing,” the actor said.

“She just spoils my cover and is, ‘Go on, get back to packing’ so she crushes me in front of them. And also she’s got a business that I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on and she’s annoying me.”