Coronation Street has officially introduced fans to its newest character Dee-Dee Bailey. While she hasn't appeared on screen at the time of writing, her arrival was confirmed by the ITV soap's boss earlier this month. Before September is out, viewers will finally get to meet the much-talked-about Dee Dee Bailey, Ed and Aggie's daughter.
The elusive Dee-Dee, whose real name is Diana, has never been seen on-screen but Corrie fans will be familiar with her name since Aggie, Ed, and their two sons Michael and James arrived on the street back in 2019, followed by Ed's brother, Ronnie Bailey, early last year.
Newcomer Channique Sterling-Brown has been cast in the role and she has already been teasing that it's not just her family that brings her to Weatherfield.
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"[Dee-Dee] has made a friend in Alya Nazir which has been really great," Channique told the Manchester Evening News and other media. "They're delving into Stu's case, looking to see if they can get him exonerated." It comes after Alya and her brother Zeedan believed Stu's innocence when his ex-wife appeared and told everyone he was jailed for murder.
"I think that's going to be really exciting for viewers, because obviously it's such a big storyline, and it's very gripping," Channique added. "Two young women on their detective case - I think it's really brilliant, and it's exciting to see where that'll go."
Revealing what Corrie viewers can expect from the character, the actress added: "She's a bit of me! Dee-Dee's going to bring a lot of fun, a lot of chaos - but in a good way, hopefully! Dee-Dee is organised chaos, is how I describe her. She bursts into any room she's in, she's a big personality but she's really hard-working. She's a great lawyer, she knows what she's doing."
And the character is slightly close to home for Channique. "I just think I relate to her because I think I'm quite similar in that way... I'm really friendly, I'm really chatty, but when I'm in the zone, when I'm working hard, I'm there," she added. "Also, even the fact she's a lawyer. I was originally not going to do drama school, and I was going to train in law and I got a place at a law school.
"And last minute I pulled out and decided to pursue drama school. They said, 'come back to us when you've worked all that acting out your system!' And literally, here I am on the biggest soap in the country, playing this amazing solicitor."
Corrie's producer Iain MacLeod also teased the character's arrival during a press preview of what's to come this autumn. "I love this character. I loved her long before she physically existed, just by the way she was described in the Bailey family," he told us. "But essentially, you can expect a certain amount of chaos.
"She's got an incredibly big heart. She's incredibly competent at her job, but you'd never guess that to meet her. Dee Dee works in law and she's the sort of person that will issue a point-on-point takedown of a team of hotshot lawyers to defend her client but will then turn to leave the courtroom and you'll realise that she's done the whole thing with her skirt tucked into her knickers."
And he was quick to confirm that there will be no hidden agenda with Dee-Dee. "Whenever you introduce a new character, it's the default setting to go, 'And what is her dark secret that she's concealing when she arrives?' Ordinarily, that serves you very well," Iain said.
"But actually, with this character we thought, 'Well, I don't know if I want her to have one'. She's so exuberant and just seems so bulletproof and impervious to the travails of modern life that she dusts herself down and gets on with it. I didn't want to discover that she's got some terrible burden.
"Actually, it was really refreshing when we all came to that decision, which was, 'Let's not do that'. Instead it's, 'Oh yeah. She can just be incredibly joyous.'" When discussing casting Channique in the role of Dee Dee, Iain praised the actress for her "energy" and "vibrance". He added: "I'm really, really excited to see her crash land into that family."
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