Jennie McAlpine says that her Coronation Street alter ego Fiz Stape’s impending wedding to Phill Whittaker (Jamie Kenna) is “doomed”.
Viewers know that Fiz is currently planning her nuptials – but this is soapland, and special occasions rarely go smoothly. That tradition is well and truly followed when, in the lead up to the big day, Phill’s mum Mimi (Margot Leicester) causes chaos – and then his ex-wife Camilla (Louise Marwood) arrives!
Speaking about her ongoing storyline, the actress shares all the obstacles in the couple’s way and how that makes Fiz feel.
“Yes, I think that may have been one of my lines, McAlpine reveals. “It’s what I said to Evelyn in the pub: ‘This wedding is doomed,’ because it is.
“Everything is going wrong, and it goes back to her thinking, ‘Why did I think I deserve this? This nice house, this nice man, and he is nice to me and this lovely wedding… I should have stuck with Tyrone who cheated on me.’ So I think there’s a bit of that there.”
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“There’s an element where she met Phill, he’s asked her out and she thought, ‘why are you asking me out?’ And he’s told her he loves her and wants to marry her and somewhere at the back of her head, she’s thinking ‘this can’t be real’.
“And so when his gorgeous, successful ex-wife turns up, she’s thinking, ‘of course he’ll go back her instead of staying with me’. [Fiz] thinks history will repeat itself and she’ll be left again. It doesn’t help her self-esteem.”
It’s not just Phill’s connections that could disrupt the wedding, though – as Tyrone Dobbs (Alan Halsall) declares his love for Fiz.
Explaining what happens, McAlpine says: “It’s just before the wedding. It’s not a total shock to her when he says that as he’s been making it totally obvious that he’d like it to get back to normal for the past few weeks, months.
“But the timing is pretty lousy, and she still wants to marry Phill.”
Despite this attitude, Fiz is left in a bit of a spin on the morning of the wedding, admits McAlpine.
“In her head she’s just thinking, ‘La la la, he didn’t say that.’ It’s just a moment of madness. ‘This wedding is happening, this is what we’re doing, so we’re going for it’. That’s her thought process in the morning.”
Then there’s one final blunder ahead of the pair saying their vows.
“Yes, that’s the registry being cancelled on the morning of the wedding, so the wedding really is doomed,” McAlpine explains. “Her eyebrow gets stuck to her cheek, so that’s another sign.”
Asked to expand on what she thinks of the wedding, McAlpine concludes it’s a bit of a disaster! “Fiz was saying all those lines, ‘should we have done this’, ‘it’s doomed’, ‘should we have had this big wedding?’ I was thinking no, you shouldn’t!”
You’ll just have to wait and see whether Fiz makes it up the aisle, so tune in next week to find out.
Read more:
- Fiz’s move away from the cobbles explained in Coronation Street
- Fiz and Tyrone’s relationship crisis is classic Corrie
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