EXCLUSIVE: Coronation Street stars avoided each other before ‘intense’ 12-hour showdown

Coronation Street’s Lauren Bolton actress Cait Fitton revealed all on filming “intense” scenes with her co-star, following a shock return to the ITV soap.

The actress made her big comeback to the soap this week, as flashbacks confirmed what really happened to Lauren back in February. Despite flashbacks weeks ago appearing to confirm Lauren had been murdered by her secret lover Joel Deering, the truth emerged on Monday evening.

In a twist, Lauren returned to the show in scenes with Roy Cropper, before she was confronted by villain Joel on Tuesday. The character had tried to stay in hiding only to be caught by the man who attacked her and left her for dead five months ago.

As Lauren and Joel discussed the devastating events that led to Lauren going missing, with her presumed dead ever since, another big twist saw her confirm her pregnancy. Amid this, viewers were shown what happened between the pair, starting from the moment they first met late last year.

From there we saw flashbacks of their secret relationship, and how Joel groomed Lauren before turning violent. Suddenly all became clear as we saw their relationship went on for months, right up until Lauren decided she didn’t want to be involved with him anymore.

With that Joel turned nasty, leading to his violent assault on her when he smacked her over the head with a chair leg. The scenes were pretty horrific, as Joel tormented Lauren and chased her around her flat as she sobbed and pleaded for help.

We saw her grabbed by him before she managed to attack him, only for him to stop her from leaving. In the horrifying scenes, Joel then shoved Lauren to the floor, slammed her head against the carpet before bludgeoning her with the chair leg.

Actress Cait has spoken exclusively to The Mirror about the “genuine fear” she felt filming the scenes with her co-star Calum Lill, who plays menacing Joel. She confessed that while he was “lovely” in real life, his performance left her utterly terrified when filming the showdown.

Cait added that the pair deliberately avoided each other all day before filming the “intense” scenes, before they filmed for 12 long hours in November last year, months before Lauren would disappear onscreen. She told us: “He’s so great to work with.

“We filmed that fight flashback in November. It was a 12-hour shoot, an intense day, and we had two rehearsals on top of that with the fight arranger and the director. We filmed everything else in that episode when I came back.

“So we filmed the end of our relationship before anything else onscreen because it’s not filmed in chronological order. It was really tough, it was hard but when we did do that fight scene, we didn’t spend any time together.

“Off set we’d be in the Lauren and Joel mindset, on opposite sides of the studio so that when we got together it was really intense. When I tell you everything in that scene is all genuine fear, no part of me was acting because he just switched up. But he is lovely.”