Coronation Street star Vicky Myers ready for backlash after destroying Roy Cropper
Coronation Street’s very own super-sleuth DS Lisa Swain (Vicky Myers) is set to become a regular character on the show, much to the delight of her many fans. But Swain’s latest case is bound to be controversial, as she arrests Weatherfield icon Roy Cropper (David Neilson) on suspicion of murder.
DS Swain is investigating the disappearance of Lauren Bolton (Cait Fitton), and as far as she’s concerned Roy has been behaving quite shiftily by cleaning up Lauren’s flat.
Is he merely cleaning up as a kindness to Evelyn (Maureen Lipman) – who sublet the flat to Lauren and is liable for cleaning charges – or is he trying to cover the tracks of a heinous crime?
‘I guess because of his honesty and slight vulnerability, she sees that he’s almost too good to be true,’ Vicky Myers reflected when she spoke to Metro.co.uk.
When the police officer discovers that Roy was probably the last person to see Lauren in Weatherfield and that he gave her money despite having sacked her, her suspicions are raised.
‘I think that’s perhaps the cynics that we may become as people and a community, in that this almost seems too good to be true,’ Vicky said. ‘Do people really genuinely go and help someone and support someone and give them a little bit extra after they’ve done something terrible, and they’re there with the generosity?’
Swain’s enquiries becomes a murder investigation when blood and human tissue is found in the flat and she’s determined to find out what happened to Lauren – and from the evidence it looks like Roy might have some answers.
‘She doesn’t know Roy, she doesn’t care about Roy. And irrelevant of what anyone else says to her, she deals in facts. She’s got to get to the bottom of this,’ Vicky insisted. ‘Irrelevant to what anyone else says about this much-loved character on the Street, she doesn’t care about that. That’s of no interest to her whatsoever.’
So Swain arrests Roy – and Vicky was aware that this may not go down too well with Roy’s many fans who know he’d never harm a fly (or a bat).
‘When I read it in the scripts I thought, “Oh no, this is just going to be awful,”’ she said of the arrest scene. ‘I think there may be a fair amount of backlash, but that’s OK, I can handle it. Swain can handle it, she’s not bothered about that.’
The actress revealed she’d previously had some backlash after appearing in the hate crime storyline when the viewers knew that Corey Brent (Max Evans) was the killer of Seb Franklin (Harry Visinoni).
‘I was in my local shopping centre and somebody shouted a bit of abuse at me because I’d arrested the wrong person,’ she recalled. ‘Obviously that had aired but we’d shot it quite a few weeks before, so I didn’t understand where it was coming from, then it dawned on me what was going on.
‘In the main, people either love her or loathe her but I’ve had quite a bit of love for her in the recent couple of years. Who knows? I’ll cope with [any backlash] fairly well – I hope.’
Vicky has no doubts about Roy’s iconic status or about the actor who plays him.
‘Working with David is – wow, what a human being. He is so generous and so warm and so considerate. His talent is beyond. So to sit with him and work with him so closely, it’s really been a joy and I’ve got so much respect for the man. He’s an icon in every sense.’
So actually arresting Roy Cropper was daunting, she confessed.
‘I’m not going to lie, I was a little bit kind of, “Oh, crikey,” she said.
‘But once you get on the floor, everybody is so professional. You get on there and you become that character because the character isn’t nervous. You soon forget any worries or any thoughts you have as me, as Vicky. Because we are quite different in that respect. It doesn’t bother her.
‘As far as she’s concerned, she’s doing the right thing.’
