Stu Carpenter (Bill Fellows) has become a firm favorite for many Coronation Street fans.
One of the best things about this new character is, of course, the journey he’s been on so far.
He first showed up in a small scene in Octoberwith the backpack Corey dumped in the canal the night of Seb and Nina’s attack.
Homeless and looking for some food, Stu happily collected some meals at Speed Daal and set out, unaware that the bag he’d found was the key to getting Corey behind bars.
After learning what had happened to Nina and Seb, Stu decided to give the police the bloodied clothes he also found in the bag.
So yeah, without Stu, Corey could have gotten away with Seb’s murder.
Fast forward a few months and Stu’s life has changed dramatically. Now working as a chef at Speed Daal, Stu enjoyed a shopping trip a few weeks ago and bought some fresh new clothes and a fun cap – something he hadn’t been able to do for years.
Another complete joy when it comes to Stu is that when he first arrived, he was a completely blank canvas. With no connection to anyone on the cobblestones, the character has been building up slowly since his arrival and recently we learned he has a daughter.
However, because of Stu’s dark past, he has no contact with Bridget, instead sending presents and cards to an address he believes still lives there.
Unfortunately, on tonight’s episode, Stu gets some bad news because his latest gift is returned to him by the new owners of his daughter’s house.
Since there’s no way Stu can contact her, she can’t remember, as Bill Fellows recently told Metro.co.uk:
“That’s actually a blow to him. It’s kind of complicated, because he’s sent her presents for the past few years, but never got a thank you or anything like that. He just has a hope and belief that she must have it. So when it’s finally returned, he knows she doesn’t have the gift and she’s moved on and he doesn’t have an address for her. I think that really crushes him. It makes him turn to the booze for a moment and it really hurts. That’s strange because you think you haven’t gotten an answer from your daughter in 15 years. But he had that hope, and that hope has been completely dashed by an innocent family who just returned a present. So something so simple hit him badly.’
“I think he’s very tempted to give up, but with Yasmeen’s help, we talk about our family values, and he’s not giving up completely. It is very important to him, his daughter. Even though he has left it for a long time, it is there. In the story it becomes quite a big thing.’
Yasmeen (Shelley King) has been determined to help Stu ever since they met.
This is a beloved character, also with a traumatic past due to the abuse she has received from Geoff Metcalfe.
Yasmeen certainly sees Stu as a nice guy who’s done a few wrong things in his life, but as Bill explains, his character’s past can seriously jeopardize his friendship with Yasmeen.
“From her point of view, you can understand that she is incredibly vulnerable because of what happened in the past. We tend to have these traumas in our lives and in real life they are not forgotten, and it takes years and years and years to get over it. So she is much more vulnerable and vulnerable and we all walk around that. Stu wants to be with her, he wants a romance with her, but we’ll see how it ends.
“He’s basically a decent guy!” adds Bill.
“For Yasmeen, it brings out all her fears when she discovers the little white lies he’s told. They’re not big and for most people they wouldn’t be bad, but for Yasmeen it’s bigger. It’s a very delicate relationship they have. They are both good and decent people.’
During our conversation with the Corrie star, we got the sense that he’s really looking forward to the public learning about Stu, because when Bill first arrived, he didn’t know much about him either!
“I knew he was an ex-Navy man, and he was homeless, but I never knew exactly why he was homeless,” he reveals.
“The writers have entrusted me with a mission to take it further, and that’s what we do, we feed each other. What I’ve loved about it is that it’s also been a pretty slow burner; it didn’t all come out at once. The public has known for a while that he has some sort of criminal record, but no one knows what that is.
“When it finally comes out, it’s a strong story.”
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