Coronation Street actress Channique Sterling-Brown revealed that she was once turned down for the role of playing Naomi Walters in Emmerdale before joining Wheatherfield
Coronation Street star Channique Sterling-Brown has revealed before landing the role on the ITV soap she audtioned for a role in Emmerdale – but was turned down.
Her admission came while she appeared on The Big Quiz Coronation Street vs Emmerdale last year. Channique, 27, who plays Dee Dee Bailey in the soap, first stepped on to the cobbles last year and was awarded the title of Best Newcomer earlier this year at the Inside Soap Awards. Sat with her co-stars, Jack P Shepherd and Tony Maudsley, the trio faced Emmerdale actors Mark Charnock, Kevin Mathurin and Natalie Ann Jameson in a general knowledge quiz about their soaps Channique admitted that if things had gone her way, she could have been sat on the opposite team but didn’t make the cut to join Emmerdale. The actress had auditioned to play Naomi Walters who is the daughter of Kevin’s character Charles Anderson.
She told Kevin: “I could have been your daughter, but I didn’t get the job.” Her shock admission left host Stephen Mulhern and the panelists in shock. as this was the first time they had heard the news. This comes after Channique’s character Dee Dee has been involved in an inter-racial relationship with Joel Deering, played by Calum Lill.
Responding to backlash over their relationship, Channique said during a documentary titled Breaking Through with Zeze Millz, that fan reaction to her inter-racial relationship has been nothing short of “bizarre.” She said: “The dating storyline is really fun. Calum Lill, who plays Joel, is wonderful. We’re getting on like a house on fire. I saw some comments about us being an interracial couple. Almost like ‘An interracial couple on the Street – God forbid.’ I just thought it’s so bizarre, because the relationship had nothing to do with race. It really is just about two people who have found each other, and are really in that loved-up, gross honeymoon phase.”
She added: “It’s really nice to be able to play that without… I think as a Black woman in the industry, I think we do put constraints on ourselves on how we’re going to be presented, especially romantically. So whether we are the sexual interest or just the friend-zoned woman or whatever, I feel like we’re often hypersexualised or under-sexualised as Black female characters. So, again, it’s really nice to have this authentic relationship for Dee-Dee and Joel. It’s just normal. I really, really do love that. I think it’s so important to, obviously, present culture.”
She then continued: “I hate when people are like: ‘You’re playing the race card.’ No one’s making it about race. People just see ‘other’ and they assume that’s what it is. But it’s literally not about that at all. And that’s the same situation I feel with Dee-Dee. There is no race storyline that I’ve had, because she’s just a Black female solicitor. That’s who she is.”
