Coronation Street fans love her as a sharp-tongued battleaxe who takes no prisoners. But Dame Maureen Lipman is far more careful about what she says off camera than her character Evelyn Plummer.
The comic actress says it is harder to speak her mind now because of cancel culture.
She faced an online backlash over the summer after sticking up for JK Rowling in the transgender debate. And she has warned comedy risks being “wiped out” because too many performers are scared of offending audiences.
Maureen, 76, says: “You can’t be Evelyn in today’s climate. “You can’t make jokes that I would normally make. I am watching myself carefully.
“I am not going to be on breakfast television like someone we know telling people they can f*** off
“At the same time I am an intelligent person and I want a better world. I don’t know how I identify and I am watching carefully as to how this plays out because prejudice is prejudice, however you dress it up.”
Maureen thinks her late husband, the dramatist Jack Rosenthal, would have adored her Corrie character and laughed at her acidic one-liners. And she believes it is vital that viewers see forthright older women such as Evelyn on screen.
“I think that’s important because I think in life nobody ever speaks their minds, very rarely,” she says.
“I think it’s great for people to see someone who actually has no membrane between her mouth and her brain and I think everybody would like to be like that but because of social mores you can’t, so she’s a good character.
“I think Jack would love this character and I have known enough people in my life who are Evelyn.”
Grandmother Maureen was married to Jack – who wrote for Corrie in the 1960s – for 30 years until he died in 2004, aged 72.
She is still mourning the death of her partner of 13 years, Guido Castro, who passed away last year aged 84.
Earlier this month the Yorkshire-born actress picked up an Inside Soap comedy award for her portrayal of Evelyn – grandmother to hapless mechanic Tyrone Dobbs and a regular since 2018.
She admits to sometimes adding her take to what Evelyn says.
Maureen explains: “I do the script as it’s written but if I don’t think something’s right...
“Alan Halsall [who plays Tyrone] always says to me, ‘What will you be saying today?’”
But she adds: “I’m trying not to get above myself. I’m quite pleased with an award for comedy.”
This month’s gong was the latest of dozens over a glittering career spanning seven decades on stage and screen.
One of her most famous roles was playing Jewish mother Beattie – famed for saying “you got an ology?” – in the 1980s BT adverts.
She also won acclaim in the theatre with the Royal Shakespeare Company and as terrible 1940s opera singer Florence Foster Jenkins in Glorious!, which later became a Hollywood movie starring Meryl Streep.
It would be easy for Maureen to let things go to her head but she says nobody is bigger than the show itself.
She adds: “I’m trying not to be blasé because it does count. But, you know, in the 60-odd years of Coronation Street it’s just another brick in the road, isn’t it? And nobody is ever bigger than the show.”
Maureen recently took three months off from the ITV soap to star in one woman theatre show Rose.
But she is staying put in Corrie, explaining: “Because they’ve let me out to do this one-woman play for 12 weeks, as long as I can keep doing something else then I’ll stay because I can’t just play that.
“I would get very bored very quickly so they’re very kind like that. It’s nearly killed me though.”
She won hearts with her emotional trip to Poland with Corrie co-star Rula Lenska in ITV’s DNA Journey to investigate their ancestry.
And Maureen says she would like to investigate her Jewish family history further by making more shows.
“Nothing will ever be as surprising as that, it was amazing,” she says Maureen has spoken in the past of considering emigrating to Israel because of increased anti-Semitism.
The issue is back in the headlines after Kanye West ’s remarks and tweets about Jews led to him being dropped by sportswear brand Adidas and having his Twitter and Instagram accounts locked. Asked what she thinks of the US rapper – who has changed his name to Ye – Maureen says: “He is not a well boy, like Mel Gibson. They’re not well.”
In July the actress waded into the debate about attempts to redefine the language surrounding gender issues that has raged since JK Rowling sarcastically tweeted about the controversy in 2019.
Maureen said at the time: “I am an actress, not an actor and, if somebody tries to take the word ‘woman’ away from me, I shall be very cross.
"Some of my views can be a little old fashioned. But don’t attack me for them. Consider my point of view. Demonstrate a little kindness. Be patient. If you have to kick a** at someone like Joanne Rowling, who’s literally taught a generation to read, something’s not right.”
