Coronation Street stalwart Helen Worth is set to leave the ITV soap opera after starring as Gail Platt for 50 years, the broadcaster has announced.
The actress, 73, will bid farewell to the cobbles at the end of the year after she celebrates her golden anniversary next month.
She will leave the show following a “major storyline for the Platt family”, which she is due to start filming next month.
Worth said: “This year felt like the perfect time to leave the show after celebrating 50 years in the most wonderful job on the most wonderful street in the world.
“I made the decision at the start of the year and spoke to the producers who were very kind and understanding.
“I have been truly blessed to have been given the most incredible scripts week in week out, and to have worked with fantastic actors, directors, and a brilliant crew.
“The past 50 years have flown by and I don’t think the fact that I am leaving has quite sunk in yet.”
Having joined the Cobbles in July 1974, Worth’s character has been a prominent figure in a number of explosive storylines gripping the soap over the years.
Her ill-fated love life has come to define the character, having suffered an affair and the deaths of four of her five husbands.
In 2014, ITV honoured the long-serving actress with a documentary celebrating her 40 years on the soap with a one-off special titled Gail & Me.
After being made an MBE for her services to drama in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in 2022, Worth told the PA news agency: “To have had a job and one that I love, and to be able to work in it is quite extraordinary. And then to get an award for it is just the icing on the cake.”
Following her departure news, Coronation Street executive producer Iain MacLeod said: “The words ‘legend’ and ‘icon’ get used a lot these days but they genuinely do apply to Gail and to Helen Worth.
“However, given her humility, I know Helen won’t thank me for saying so.
“In Helen’s hands, Gail has been a huge part of Coronation Street for five decades and at the centre of some of the most memorable storylines – often deriving from her catastrophically bad luck in choosing husbands.
“Her ill-fated marriage to Richard Hillman was one of the most ground-breaking stories in soap history and cemented Gail’s already established status as one of the Corrie greats.
“As the matriarch of the Platt clan, her affectionately prickly relationships with her kids and flighty mum Audrey epitomise what makes the show great: complicated family dynamics brought to life impeccably by Helen’s dramatic and comedic chops, alongside those of her fictional clan.
“Gail has given us countless hours of entertainment but it should also be said that Helen herself is a consummate professional and a thoroughly good egg.
“Everyone connected to the show will miss having her around the place just as much as the viewers will miss having her on their screens and we wish her all the very best for the future.”
By Naomi Clarke, PA Senior Entertainment Reporter
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