Coronation Street star says ‘Manc twang’ helped her land her role on the soap

Rising actress Millie Gibson has credited her stand-out Manchester accent for landing the role of Kelly Neelan on Coronation Street.

The seventeen year old plays the role of the rebellious daughter of murdered bailiff Rick Neelan and his estranged wife Laura, who is soon to stand trial accused of the much-talked about murder of Seb Franklin.

Millie, who joined the Corrie cast two years ago after training at the Oldham Theatre Workshop since the age of eleven, has since thanked her Manchester accent for not only landing the role, but for her success on the soap.

@milliegibbo / Instagram

Speaking to The Mirror, she reflected on her audition, saying: “There were lots of girls in the waiting room that looked nothing like me.

“They were all quite well-spoken and I’ve got a bit of a Manc twang in my voice so I was a bit like, ‘Oh no, am I going to have to play her in a different way?’

“But in the end I didn’t because my take on Kelly was while she was a private schoolgirl, I knew she did not quite fit in as the rest of them. So I think not having that well-spoken, posh put-together voice worked quite well.”

ITV

Moving onto the topic of her current storyline – which is one of the darkest and most tragic the soap is tackling at the moment – Millie added: “It’s daunting because it’s such a big pressure to get it right because it was based on a crime that happened – and I think everyone involved has done such an amazing job.

“I feel very honoured and very lucky to be part of it.”

The murder of Corrie’s Seb Franklin is based on the real-life hate crime killing of twenty-year-old Sophie Lancaster in a park in 2007.

Coronation Street is back on ITV tonight at 7:30pm.