For three months, I carried a secret that made my stomach turn every time someone looked at me too long. I knew something the audience didn’t, and keeping it hidden felt like a physical weight. When the cast started whispering that Theo was going to be murdered, I never once thought I’d be involved. I remember sitting in the green room as people were called in one by one for meetings.
They’d come back and say, “Well, it’s not me. I’ve been told I’m not the murderer. ” So everyone started looking at everyone else suspiciously. Then I was asked to see Kate, our producer.
She sat me down and said, “We’ve got this storyline coming up. We think it’s time for Theo to leave, but we want a real whodunit. And it’s going to be Sarah. ”
I was genuinely shocked, but I was also excited.
I couldn’t believe they’d chosen my character for something this big. Why Sarah? I think it comes down to history. There’s so much between her and Todd, and when she went up onto that scaffolding to find Todd and found Theo instead, she genuinely feared for her life.
Maybe it triggered something from when Callum attacked her. In that moment, it was him or her, and she chose to survive. Filming the death scene was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. We shot the scaffolding scenes months ago on night shoots, and I had Theo’s blood on my hands.
The irony wasn’t lost on me when I posted a lovely Instagram photo from those nights saying, “Join me on a Corrie night shoot! ” — in reality, I was dressed to kill Theo. The director, Surrey, was brilliant. He said, “If we’re doing this, we’ve got to do it real.
” So we did it real, and then he cut around it just enough that the audience wouldn’t clock it immediately. When Sarah comes back into the Platt house afterward, she’s visibly distressed, but it’s blink and you’ll miss it. And then Jodie whacks her over the head, which is the perfect distraction. I actually went back and rewatched that episode after it aired.
You have to be watching so closely to notice that Sarah’s hands have blood on them as she looks into the box. It was such a clever piece of storytelling. The flashback reveal scenes at the dinner party were a completely different experience. It felt like we were doing a mini play.
The director, Dom, had done his homework and knew exactly how he wanted every shot. It was a fantastic group of people to work with, and I loved every minute of it. The aftermath is where things get really interesting. Sarah didn’t call the police.
She panicked, and instead of doing the sensible thing, she reached out to someone she thought she could trust. She chose Gary. Gary has killed people before and he’s still walking the street, so if anyone was going to help her hide this, it’s him. He tried to save her life, he protected her, and he killed someone to protect her.
That sounds psychopathic when you say it out loud, but there’s something about Sarah and Gary that just works. They understand each other in a way no one else does. They’ve both moved on — he seems happy with Maria, and she’s happy with Kit — but when they’re together, there’s an unspoken thing between them. I play it as if there’s still something there, no matter how much water has passed under the bridge.
Kit being a detective complicates everything. Sarah loves him and wants their relationship to work, but she knows that if he ever found out what she did, it would destroy everything. She didn’t call him that night. She called Gary.
And now she’s trapped in this awful limbo, wondering if Kit would even cover for her, and whether he should have to. The guilt is eating her alive. People keep asking if Sarah had amnesia after Jodie hit her. I don’t think it was amnesia.
I think the bang on the head, strange as it sounds, gave her a way to compartmentalize. She could pretend, “That happened, but I don’t want to think about it. Let’s just pretend I got hit and it didn’t happen. ” But the truth keeps bubbling up.
Parts of what happened keep coming back to her no matter how hard she tries to bury it. Filming every scene felt like I was screaming a confession without saying a word. Every time Sarah looks at Kit, I thought, “Oh my God, I look so guilty. ” Every time she asks about Todd, I thought, “Does he know it was me?
” It was exhausting trying to play guilty without looking too guilty. Todd is a whole other problem. Theo treated him horrendously, but Todd still loved him. There were so many mixed emotions there.
And the real issue is that Summer went to prison for a murder Sarah committed. Sarah didn’t come forward. She let it happen. If Todd ever finds out, it could destroy their relationship completely.
There’s a scene where Todd says, “Summer didn’t do it,” and Sarah responds, “I know she didn’t. ” For me, that line screams, “I know she didn’t do it because I did. ” But to an audience, it just looks like Sarah trusts her family. In the days leading up to the reveal, people started guessing.
All the way through, the theory was that Sarah was covering for Gary. But slowly, people started to wonder if it was the other way around. When Sarah and Gary started having more conversations, the speculation really picked up. By the time the truth was revealed, some people were saying, “Yeah, I knew it all along.
”
Could Sarah hold her nerve? I think she’d crack eventually. I really do. After what happened with her psychosis following Callum, this kind of pressure would get to her.
The only thing keeping her quiet is her children. She has Bethany and Harry, and she absolutely does not want to leave them. She knows deep down it was self-defense, but she’s handled the aftermath so badly that she now thinks she has no choice but to keep her mouth shut. If Sarah ended up in prison, she’d hate it.
She can be feisty and hold her own, but against genuinely tough women, I think she’d be in real trouble. I don’t want to see her in there, and I don’t want to see me in there either. Jodie is another ticking time bomb. Sarah has always been wary of her because she says these odd things at home.
Jodie overheard Sarah on the phone to Gary and made a comment about it, and Sarah shut her down hard. But it turns out Jodie was onto something. When Sarah finds out Jodie is the one who hit her and knows about the murder, she’s going to be shocked. But honestly, with everything else going on, I’m not sure she has the capacity to deal with it.
She’s too busy trying to hold herself together. The Platts are no strangers to covering up murders — they’ve done it with Callum. If they found out the truth about Sarah, I can’t imagine they’d turn their backs on her. If she told them and explained that her life was in danger and it was self-defense, I think they’d back her.
David would give her the hardest time, obviously. He’d say, “Why didn’t you call the police? What were you thinking? ” And she’d say, “Well, it’s a bit late now, David.
” But ultimately, they’d support her. People keep asking how it feels to join the long history of soap killers. Honestly, I didn’t even think about it until someone mentioned it. I’ve been so consumed with covering it up that I forgot Sarah is a murderer now.
But I feel honored to be part of the storyline and very lucky to play it. It’s been difficult because my face is constantly giving me away. Sarah looks guilty, but I can’t look too guilty, and if I don’t look guilty enough, I panic. It’s been a delicate balance.
The best part is that the aftermath has been the best couple of months of filming I’ve ever had. Without giving anything away, there are so many twists coming. Will Kit find out? How will he handle it?
Will Todd discover the truth? What about DC Swain, that formidable detective who barely blinks? Every one of those scenes made Sarah feel physically sick, sweat rolling down her back while she tried to act like everything was fine. After 26 years on and off with Coronation Street, Corrie still feels as special as it did in the beginning.
If anything, more so. With age, you gain wisdom. You appreciate it when something is good. The people I work with are genuinely wonderful, and the vibe in the green room is amazing.
The Platts are like family — Jack, Ben, and everyone else, we all bring something different. Julia and Lucy are brilliant, and Sue Nichols is incredible. I feel very lucky. People worried when Helen left and Gail went, but I never did.
We’ve worked together for so long that we have a shorthand. We’re comfortable in our own skin, and we don’t try to be like each other. We come together and it just works. Whether Sarah stays on the street or ends up in prison, I have to put my faith in the writers.
It’s my job. I just hope there are some juicy storylines along the way to make it all worth it. I hope and pray there’s a future for Sarah, and I can’t wait to see how she navigates all of this.
Until then, I’ll just enjoy watching the audience react to the twist.
