Matt Milburn disappointed not to work with famous co-star brother in Coronation Street
Coronation Street star Matt Milburn spoke out about how he wished he had the opportunity to work with his soap star brother Greg Wood earlier this year.
Matt, who has featured on the ITV soap on and off for eight years, is the real-life brother of Greg, who portrayed cobbles gangster Rick Neelan.
Evil Rick Neelan’s life ended in 2019, when Gary Windass (Mikey North) murdered him and buried his body in the woods after a violent showdown.
Matt reprised his role as footballer Tommy Orpington at the beginning of the year, returning to Weatherfield for an affair storyline with Tracy McDonald (Kate Ford).
Suffice to say Matt loves working with his Corrie co-stars, but that hasn’t stopped him wondering what it would’ve been like if Tommy and Rick ever came across each other on the cobbles.
‘Yes, I think my brother is a fantastic actor’, he told us.
‘It’s on my bucket list…to work together at some point. Our paths have just never crossed you know. We’ve both been in sort of three major soaps and other projects and we’ve never actually worked together. So yes, it’s a shame Rick’s not still alive really. My brother told me about the Tommy Oprington character, so that was quite amusing. But yeah, I would have loved it is the answer.’
‘Greg was probably my biggest inspiration I would say. I sort of had no sort of massive force of ever getting into acting. I was going off to do sports journalism’, he added.
‘I’d just been accepted to go to university when I was sort of in my late teens for various college courses. Long story. To cut long story short, Greg was due to do an acting job. I’d seen him do many plays, saw him coming off the stage and the buzz and the adrenaline that he had. I thought, “I want to try that” and I had sort of been in his ear about it. And then he put me forward for a job that he couldn’t do because he just got another job. Didn’t tell me, and so I did this acting job!
‘I was terrible for two weeks, but it gave me that sort of fire in my belly and for the first time in my life, I think at that point, it was actually this is what I wanted to do. Then literally four weeks after that, I got an audition for Hollyoaks. That was my first professional audition and then I ended up being there for three years and that was like my drama school, really. But yeah, my brother was a big inspiration, probably my main inspiration.’
In recent weeks, Tracy has returned from her new life in Spain with Tommy and it seemed that things were a little awry.
Initially, her return reason seemed to be a closely guarded secret, and whenever family or friends mentioned Tommy she was keen to shut the conversation down.
After coming to blows with her dad Ken’s (William Roache) carer Cassie Plummer (Claire Sweeney), Tracy sat down with her estranged husband Steve (Simon Gregson) and the two had a heart to heart.
She admitted that Tommy spends morning, noon and night at work and she feels lonely in their huge villa by herself.
When Steve asked why she returned to Weatherfield, she confessed that she wanted those close to her nearby and was using the time away from Spain to contemplate her future.
When Cassie returned back to No. 1, she noticed a wealth of unread texts and missed calls from Tommy on Tracy’s phone.
Is this the end of the road for them both?