Coronation Street star Julia Goulding, who plays Shona Platt, has revealed an upcoming stunt that’s going to leave viewers shocked – and was extremely gory and sticky to film.
The horrific incident comes after David (Jack P Shepherd) receives a visit from Andy (Andrew Goth), brandishing a knife. He says Harvey Gaskell (Will Mellor) has got tired of waiting for David to pay up the money he owes and wants him dead for his life insurance.
Later, Shona arrives in the street just in time to witness a car hurtling towards David – and it ploughs straight into him, also hitting Daisy (Charlotte Jordan) who has also crossed the road at that point. Has Harvey finally exacted his revenge on David?
‘David’s been really shifty,’ Julia Goulding explained, describing the scene that unfolds as Shona arrives at the scene.
‘As she’s driving down the street, she sees David standing in the middle of the road, and he is standing in the middle of the road, he’s not crossing like Daisy does. So Shona stops the car and gets out, and she’s thinking, “What is he doing?” And then bam, the car runs him over.’
The Coronation Street team took care to make the stunt as realistic as possible, and even watching it as it happened wasn’t easy for Julia.
‘It was really shocking, actually, you kind of feel very nervous before you see it happen,’ she admitted. ‘But it was fantastic to watch the stunt. The stunt people are just incredible.’
In the moment, it doesn’t occur to Shona that David could have been deliberately waiting to be hit by the car, only registering his behaviour before the incident as ‘shifty.’
‘From when the car hits him, her mind isn’t even working, I think she’s just trying to keep him alive, or hope that he stays alive,’ the actress revealed.
‘I think it will take a few days for her to process what had happened. We see if he survives or not, and then I think she can start to actually think about putting pieces together of the jigsaw puzzle.’
David sustains some terrible injuries from the collision, and Julia described the huge amount of fake blood that was involved.
‘He’s dead, he’s going to bleed to death with her trying to stop it,’ she said. ‘There was a lot of blood. Jack was on the floor for a couple of days, and we were both covered in this sticky, glucosey, syrupy blood.’
There are strict rules in place about how violent and bloody scenes are portrayed on TV, especially before 9PM and Coronation Street had to be mindful of that. ‘We wore quite dark clothing as well so it doesn’t upset compliance,’ Julia added.
As harrowing as these scenes will be to watch, Julia and the rest of the team really enjoyed putting them together.
‘We have a fantastic gang, all the actors and the crew, you just get on with it and you have a laugh,’ Julia told us.
‘And obviously you’re switching from really serious stuff and then when the cameras aren’t rolling, you’re absolutely side-splitting laughing. You have to really, when you have really sort of shocking, serious scenes to film. We had a great few days.’
But could those scenes have been David’s last?
