We’re seeing double!
Bernie Winter (Jane Hazlegrove) will come face to face with her doppelgänger in upcoming Coronation Street scenes, as a surprising new storyline begins.
Lookalike Fern (played by Gabrielle Glaister) arrives on the cobbles, and ends up roping Bernie into some dodgy antics!
While we have yet to see Fern on-screen, this isn’t the first time that Glaister has appeared in Coronation Street. She also played Debs Brownlow, the sister of Natalie Horrocks (Denise Welch), for a short stint back in 2000.
Star Hazlegrove, who has played Bernie since 2019, suggested the idea of her character having a double to one of the ITV soap’s writers, Jonathan Harvey. Hazlegrove and new co-star Glaister, best known for starring in Brookside and Blackadder, have been constantly mistaken for each other over the years, giving the Corrie actress the inspiration for the plot.
And Hazlegrove has revealed that since then, co-stars have stopped Glaister in the studio corridors for a chat thinking it was her!
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“I mentioned this idea to Jonathan a while ago,” Hazlegrove says. “Gabby and I are constantly mistaken for each other with people saying they have seen one of us in something when it was the other one. We have often laughed about it together but then I started thinking it might be fun to have her in the show as Bernie’s secret twin or a doppelgänger.
“I was so chuffed when they told me that they had devised this storyline and that Gabby was on board. Shortly after I had heard that we were doing the story, I was at the Soap Awards and someone who used to work with Gabby started talking to me thinking I was her.
“The actor was mortified when I pointed out who I was, but of course I don’t mind being mistaken for Gabby. It is a huge compliment and secretly I was thinking, ‘That’s brilliant, this storyline is going to work so well.’”
Glaister adds: “Jane and I have been mistaken for each other for years and years. Me constantly denying that I was in Casualty, Jane insisting that she wasn’t in Brookside! Or people congratulating me on my performance in something I wasn’t in because it was Jane being brilliant.
“A very good friend of mine texted me last week to say he caught a bit of Corrie and thought I was very good. I pointed out that I wasn’t on screen yet!
“When they approached me with the storyline, it seemed like fate! What they’ve written is so clever and I’m having a ball working with Jane.”
Glaister will debut in the role of Fern from 26th August when Bernie heads out to collect young Joseph’s (William Flanagan) new school uniform and returns with a posh jacket she has been given by mistake. Fern will then knock on Bernie’s door, insisting that Bernie has stolen the garment.
The two women are taken aback by how similar they look, leading to Fern offering Bernie a dodgy way to earn money the following week.
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