Coronation Street star has shared her reaction to Lauren Bolton's return as she explained why she's back, nearly five months after escaping Weatherfield. Fans of the ITV soap have been left to wonder since February 23 whether the teen was alive or dead.
As viewers know, Lauren mysteriously went missing after being sacked by Roy Cropper from her job at Roy's Rolls. Before she vanished, viewers saw her being visited both by the cafe boss with her wages and a mystery person.
When new love interest Bobby Crawford found her flat unlocked and empty, he was concerned and soon filed a missing person's report. Later, during a flat viewing, Sean Tully found blood on the curtains and it was long before a murder inquiry ensued.
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Roy soon became DS Lisa Swain's prime suspect after being the last person known to have seen Lauren alive, and for misguidedly cleaning the flat she lived in to help out his pal Evelyn Plummer, who was sub-letting the precinct flat to Lauren.
The beloved character was later charged with Lauren's murder and found himself targeted by online trolls and internet sleuths while on bail. But one woman, claiming to be Lauren's mum, took things too far and a scuffle over a phone on the street led to her falling and being injured and with Roy arrested, he was denied bail.
Things finally came to a head at the start of June when in heartbreaking scenes, Roy was lured to the prison library where far-right extremist Griff Reynolds pounced and threatened his life unless he wrote a confession saying he did kill Lauren while holding a blade to his throat.
Roy had written the note before attention was called, and a crying Roy was rescued before emotional scenes saw him released from prison. But as Corrie fans saw, it was revealed that Joel was the one behind Lauren's disappearance in a shocking flashback scene.
After making a swift exit from Roy's homecoming, after he was finally released from prison, Joel was met by Hope Stape who handed him a necklace that she found in his car when cleaning it, which viewers recognised belonged to Lauren. Then, a flashback clip revealed him to be Lauren's secret 'boyfriend' and him brutally attacking her with a chair leg.
With fans left in the dark over whether Lauren was alive or dead, at the end of Monday night's (July 8) Corrie, it was confirmed that she was in fact alive and was seen by Roy's bedside after he suffered a heart attack following a confrontation with a gang of youths who tormented him over Lauren.
Sharing why Lauren has returned now, Cait Fitton, who plays her, told the Manchester Evening News: "When you've got through any sort of trauma, us as human beings like to put it to the back of our mind and hope it goes away and distract ourselves but it's always there.
It's never going to go away and I think with Lauren, putting it behind [her] and moving on from it, she kind of rushes that process... So since she's left Weatherfield, she's been running from hostel to hostel, she's been homeless. She's not been able to pay the rent so she keeps getting booted of different hostels. She's not been able to come back because she doesn't know where Joel is.
"For all she knows, Joel could be still in Weahteridfled, he could be away from Weatherfield but she doesn't want to take that risk because obviously she was near a near-death experience and she doesn't want to face that trauma again."
She continued: "It isn't until she hears that Roy is in hospital and that it's not just affected him mentally but physically that she says, 'Right, I've got to go back and I've got to put things right. No matter what the consequence, I've got to do it'. Roy was so important to her and she's scared of letting people down as well.
"She knows she's going to get backlash from people when she comes back because Roy's adored by everyone on the street. So she knows that's something she's going to have to face. I think she's been surviving as welll, always has been. She's been brought up to be in survival mode and she's a survivor herself so I think that contributed to it a lot."
But she's not expecting the biggest welcome back from viewers. "People will probably not like her at first because of what's happened with Roy which I can understand because he's a lovely character and people adore him. But I hope when they know why she's been away, they will see that vulnerability and will understand."
Sharing how it came to Lauren being at the forefront of one of the soap's biggest storylines of the year, Cait told us: "When I started in 2022, Lauren as supposed to be a three-part character. I went in, I did what I had to do and was a supporting role in Paddy's [Bever, who plays Max] storyline which was the far-right storyline and I didn't know much about her. I knew what was being aired but I didn't think about why she was the way she was because if you're coming in to support a storyline, you don't really get that opportunity to dive into their past.
"But I didn't want to be this character that does what is on the page. I wanted there to be a reason she is the way she is... So when I went away after the three months I was asked back and I'd like to think I'd shown vulnerability to the character. So when I did come back, hints at what she had been through rose to the surface...
She added: "There wasn't really any discussion about it and I think I found out just before Calum [Lill, who plays Joel] started that this was going to be the storyline. I didn't know how long it was going to go on for, didn't know anything about the disappearance or how intense it was going to be. No idea! Then we started cracking on the fight scene in November and from that I thought, 'Wow, this is going to be hard. This is going to be really difficult'."
