Actress Jane Hazlegrobe has admitted to being a ‘wreck’ over the ITV soap’s Motor Neurone Disease storyline

Coronation Street star Jane Hazlegrove has spoken of her wife’s support when her work on the programme became ‘too much’. The actress has admitted to being a ‘wreck’ over the ITV soap’s Motor Neurone Disease storyline.

Jane, who is known and much-loved for playing Bernie Winter on the cobbles, has been part of the long-running storyline led by Peter Ash, who played on-screen son Paul ‘Appolo’ Foreman.

Paul tragically passed away in tear-jerking scenes, 17 months after being diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease in a hard-hitting storyline Corrie worked on with the help of the MND Association.

Bernie and Summer Spellman were with Paul when his health took a sudden turn as he started struggling to breathe. The pair called for an ambulance and Paul was rushed to the hospital where Bernie, Summer and Paul’s sister Gemma Winter-Brown were soon told by doctors there was nothing more they could do and they headed in to say their emotional goodbyes to Paul.

But in a tragic turn of events, Paul’s husband Billy Mayhew didn’t make it to the hospital in time to fulfil his promise of being by Paul’s side when the time came. Viewers saw Paul had already passed as Summer got Billy, who was running to the hospital after a series of unfortunate events, on the phone.

Paul’s mum Bernie still encouraged Billy to say what he needed to Paul, while Summer and Gemma watched on with devastation as Billy was left thinking he’d only managed to say he loved him one last time over the phone before arriving at the hospital after he’d passed away.

Speaking about how she has dealt with filming such moving and intense scenes, Jane confessed to the Manchester Evening News: “I’m an absolute wreck! I’m quite an emotional person anyway, which I don’t mind sharing, and so we’ve all come together. I’m very much about my company, the people that are around me and I like to check in with all my other actors.

“Gorgeous Harriet [Bibby, who plays Summer] has set up a group for us all that we all tap in to, our ‘Corrie family’. So it is really hard and I couldn’t actually open this script [for Paul’s final episode] at home because I didn’t want to have that hanging around my dining room.”

Revealing how her wife, fellow actress Isobel Middleton, stepped in, the soap star revealed: “My Mrs took me off to a shepherd’s hut in Northumbria and we sat in the sunshine with a bottle of wine and read it together because I just thought it’s going to be too much for me to have in the house, as it were. I do cry a lot anyway, I’m an emotional woman, so it’s usually in the car on the way home…”

Harriet, meanwhile, said it was ‘tough’ to film the final scenes. with Peter as Paul. “Since I’ve joined the show, it’s been us together and that’s been our family unit and we get along so well and have so many laughs. So when all the characters were saying goodbye to their son and husband and brother and dad, we were saying bye to our friend and it was tough.

“It’s also rare that here we get to film chronologically because of the way schedules work and things like that but it was quite strange that in the Pual’s last few days, it was Pete’s last few days and when we were filming the aftermath you really felt, ‘he’s gone!'” Jane added: “We really missed him. It was like we were waiting for him to walk back through the door.”