Dancing on Ice fans were already yelling at their TV screens last week when Christopher Dean made the sarcastic remark that would send them into a frenzy.
All four judges had just been booed for giving low scores to Coronation Street 's Mollie Gallagher when Olympic legend Chris quipped: "I love that there are so many experts in the room."
He then challenged Mollie to be the first celeb to do the dreaded headbanger, one of the most difficult – and dangerous – moves, on Sunday night's show.
Mollie, 25, who plays goth Nina Lucas in the ITV soap, has not talked about the furore until now. But it's quickly obvious she is not one to take criticism to heart, or back down from a challenge.
"Christopher is an icon and his comments are always obviously correct," she laughs. "But really, I like constructive criticism, because you know what to do better next time.
"I'm always going on about the judges' comments in training, 'But Chris and Jane said this', 'Chris and Jane are asking for that', so it is good."
Mollie and pro partner Sylvain Longchambon, 40, scored just 26 out of 40 for their cheerleader-inspired routine, putting them 7th on the scoreboard, only just missing the skate-off.
Perhaps playing a goth is more up Mollie's street than a cheerleader.
"I agree that the performance wasn’t as good," she says. "I wasn’t focusing on the ice skating because I didn’t even know what cheerleading was."
But last week is done and dusted. And this week is all about the headbanger – in which she will be swung by her ankles with her face inches from the ice. They’ve been doing a lot of practice.
"Hopefully it will go OK, because apparently it’s very, very dangerous if it doesn’t," she says, laughing. "Hopefully Chris will be happier with me. I’m just loving it so much I don’t want it to end."
Another unexpected benefit of going on the primetime show is getting to know Sylvain's wife Samia, a veteran Corrie star who has played Maria Connor for the last 23 years. Samia met Sylvain when she was paired with him on Dancing on Ice in 2013.
Mollie joined the soap in 2019, but because she doesn’t tend to share many scenes with mum-of-two Samia, 42, she didn’t really know her beforehand.
She says: "Samia and I had never really met at all, but now I’m speaking with her all the time. It’s nice because Sam has been in the business for so long, I kind of look up to her and now I feel that if I need advice I can ask her, we’ve got a nice little dynamic."
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Mollie's boyfriend Dan Myers also works on the soap as a sound editor. So will the four of them be going on double dates? "Oh my God, definitely, I say this to them all the time," she chuckles. "100%, we’ll be like a little Fab Four."
Mollie met Dan, who is also a guitarist in Manchester indie-rock band Inego, soon after she arrived on the cobbles.
She says: "He started a couple of months before me. A few people went to the pub after work, he was on the post production side and I was with the actors. Then I recognised him and shouted over, 'Oh, do you want to come and sit at our table?'
"That was three years ago now. I’d go into his sound room and he’d show me stuff and I was like, 'wow, very interesting!'
"The romance kind of happened all at once. But it was a weird one because we started doing loads of stuff, and then Covid happened, and we couldn’t see each other for a long time."
Yet the couple didn't waste any time after lockdown and Dan moved to live with Mollie in her plush Manchester apartment. Only child Mollie grew up in Swinton, Gtr Manchester, studying drama at college and at London's Academy of Live and Recorded Arts before landing her very first acting job as Corrie's Nina.
She quickly became a soap favourite, picking up the National Television Award for Serial Drama Performance in 2021 after a harrowing storyline based on the real-life murder of goth Sophie Lancaster in 2007.
She was also praised for her portrayal of Nina in a lesbian teen romance with Asha Alahan, played by Tanisha Gorey.
It was a far cry from just three years earlier when, as a drama student in London, she worked on the NTAs as a seat filler – sitting in celebs' seats when they go to the toilet so the TV cameras don’t see empty chairs.
Lifelong Corrie fan Mollie says the other programme she and her parents would watch religiously together while she was growing up was Dancing on Ice – which is why viewers might spot them ecstatically cheering her on in the audience.
She says: "They are loving it, every Sunday they want to be there in the studio. My mum is so happy about it.
"It sounds crazy but honestly, every Sunday I would finish my homework and then watch Dancing on Ice."
What would it mean to her and her family if she wins the series? The latest odds show she is third favourite.
"Oh, I can’t think about winning, because the competition is really tough," says Mollie. "I thought I would struggle to pick it up but I’m definitely getting better with that, and that’s the best part, having this new skill that I can now use for ever."
See Mollie's headbanger on Dancing On Ice on Sunday from 6.25pm on ITV.
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