In the week Corrie sexpot Todd leaves the Street, Polly Hudson finds out why he's off.

So why did you decide to leave Corrie?
I felt I'd done my time there. Four years is enough.

Is it scary to walk away from something so successful?
It is scary. Very scary. I'm back to auditioning for things again.

So what now?
It would be great if the next character I play is as far away from Todd as possible, just so I can do something else.

How long ago did they tell you Todd would be gay?
I think they had an inkling from the beginning but they didn't tell me until I'd been there a year.

What was your reaction?
Shock at first, but how can you turn down an opportunity like that? It happened when my character wasn't that prominent in the show so if he hadn't been gay, I don't know what would have happened to him.

Were you thinking about all the publicity you'd get from the storyline?
Different parts of you think different things. Part of me thought that and the other part was thinking, "I've got to go out and live my life normally and think what sort of attention, or bad attention, will I get?" That was my worry but it's been really great.

And were you worried about having to kiss boys?
[Laughs.] Of course I was!

Corrie's on at 7.30pm though, so it was hardly going to be Queer As Folk-esque
My agent at the time was like, "We have to make sure they don't want to do any late-night specials."

Obviously, people are saying that a deciding factor in you quitting was the awkwardness between you and Tina O'Brien, your ex, who is now dating your screen brother?
Yeah. Of course It was a bit awkward, but it wasn't like we were there as ourselves, we were there as our characters. You have to be professional.

But you'd just split up and yet you had to snog her every day...
I know, I know, but these things do happen.

Was it a miserable time?
Well, I wasn't the happiest person in the world, but I had this great job...

Couldn’t you have asked the writers to make Todd and Sarah fight or get her to have a fatal accident or something?
[Laughs.] Well, the end storyline is very good, how Todd leaves.

How can you say that - he walks in on Sarah and Jason in bed together!
Exactly. It's very weird sometimes but the producer assured me that it was in the character's best interests that this would happen.

But wasn't it horrible to play? A bit too close to real life?
I thought it would be pretty bad but it was cool in the end. At the end of the day, we were still acting.

How are things between you and Tina now?
We speak but we've both got different lives now. Maybe we don't have that much in common any more, but things aren't bad between us at all.

Why did Karl come back for that one episode?
Because I said I was leaving, maybe they didn't have time to establish that Todd was now a happy character after all the heartache, so they thought it might be nice to bring Karl back and have a nice ending with him so that Todd could be happy... at least for one episode!

If you could have chosen how Todd left, how would you have done it?
Maybe it would have been nice if Todd and Karl had gone off together.

Why didn't they do that?
Because this is soap and no one's allowed to be happy.

© Heat Magazine, 21/9/04

<< back