Coronation Street spoilers – Alison King reveals ‘terrifying’ scenes for Carla Connor as she suffers severe psychotic episode tomorrow
CORONATION Street will air a special episode tomorrow night that will focus on troubled Carla Connor.
The popular character, played by Alison King, will suffer a terrifying psychotic breakdown after secretly stopping taking her medication.
Some of the scenes – which include Carla talking to her dead brother Aidan Connor, believing him to be alive – are seen from Carla’s perspective.
Alison has spoken out about the episode and what it was like to film feisty Carla falling apart.
By Friday, Corrie fans will know that Carla has become so paranoid that she believes she has a microchip planted in her and has even become wary of partner Peter Barlow, who is struggling to cope with the pressure of taking care of her.
She then sees a woman in a red coat in the park and believes it is her dead friend Hayley Cropper.
Alison explains: “She believes she is being watched and followed so in her head she needs to keep on the run, she ends up in the park asking a stranger for help.
"When she won’t help her she then sees the most beautiful thing that will always help her and that is Hayley in her red coat so she follows her eventually back to Victoria Street and when she can’t see her she is absolutely mortified.
“The thing that means the most to her and always helped her get back on the straight and narrow is Hayley and she has gone.
“Then she sees her walking up the fire escape and she follows here - she has a hallucination.”
Vulnerable and delusional, Carla finds herself on the fire escape of the Victoria Court flats, where Peter eventually finds her.
But he’s shocked when he overhears Carla talking to Hayley, Aidan and Rana Habeeb – who died in the factory collapse.
Alison said of the heart-breaking scenes: “The scenes on the fire escape when Peter is there are so emotional, it was hard to play as it was so terrifying for her at that stage, inside her head everything is terrifying.
“She thinks she is seeing Hayley, then she thinks she is seeing Rana and she doesn’t know if Rana is dead or alive.
“Then she thinks she sees Aidan, to her it is real, she is in a very dangerous predicament and unrecognisable to Peter who is desperate to rescue her.”
Alison also went on to talk about the responsibility she felt with the storyline.
She added: “It shows with it happening to Carla that is can happen to anybody, of course she is just as likely to get it as any anyone because she has been through so much, the brain is so fragile and it has to snap at some point and for Carla it needs to break to mend, to change her lifestyle in some ways, to understand yourself better.”
Carla will make it down from the fire escape with Peter’s help, but it’s just the beginning of her recovery and next week will see her moved to a specialist unit in Cardiff.
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Coronation Street has worked closely with the mental health charity MIND on Carla’s storyline.
Julia Lamb, who runs Mind’s Media Advisory Service, said: “It’s refreshing to see Coronation Street explore how traumatic events can lead to psychosis, one of a number of mental health problems which are frequently misunderstood and misrepresented.
“Carla is a well-established, feisty character and her story shows how incredibly vulnerable people experiencing psychosis can be.
“When we worked with Coronation Street to develop her story, it was particularly important not to give Carla generic symptoms but to show it affects her individual character.
“For example, not looking after her appearance or even her diet the way she usually would.”