In shock scenes, Charlie De Melo has bowed out of Coronation Street as Imran Habeeb. The actor played the ITV soap character for almost five years and after weeks of scheming, his time was up.
This week, Corrie has been building up to a horror crash from Imran and his new wife Toyah. It comes as the pair battled Abi Webster for custody of baby Alfie. During Tuesday night’s episode, viewers saw newlyweds Imran and Toyah slumped unconscious in the wreckage of their car and immediately had questions about what had happened and who - if either of them - would survive.
Then during Wednesday night’s (June 1) aftermath, Imran was seen battling to get his car door open before wincing through the pain to grab his phone out of his pocket and call an ambulance. He begged them to hurry as his wife was unconscious and bits of the scaffolding continued to fall.
In a heartbreaking twist of fate, it was Imran who ended up succumbing to his injuries. After dragging Toyah to safety and staying by her side while she was placed in the back of an ambulance, the solicitor suddenly collapsed.
Paramedics fought to save his life but Imran died of a cardiac arrest on the scene. Speaking about how it felt to leave the character behind after four-and-a-half years, the actor told the Manchester Evening News and other press: "It’s uncanny really.
"It’s a strange feeling. Specifically, the final week itself, where a lot of effort had been put into getting it sorted out, there was an impending burden, it felt like there was but there may not have been, to get this right. The fact that it seemed to go well and the fact that Georgia [Taylor - who plays Toyah] was happy with it because it dovetails so much into what she’s going to be doing going forwards, that meant a lot.
It also meant by the end of that final week it was a sense of relief that I don’t think I brought the show into disrepute. I don’t think I’ve done all the other departments that worked so hard dirty.” And Charlie’s exit from the long-running soap may have felt like a long time coming as he revealed that he actually intended to quit two years ago.
"For reasons, nothing to do with the job at all, my first couple of years working there were trying," he told us. “I did find it difficult so as I was moving towards the end of that second-year option, I kind of made the decision to move on. I was ready to draw a line under my time in Manchester and say it was a worthy but failed experience to have made this big move and to have joined a job like this. But that’s when Covid struck."
He continued to explain: "So the decision kind of got taken out of my hands so it meant just by default that it was the sensible choice to stay and [then] the personal life got cleared up a bit and the camaraderie was so strong to try and keep the ship afloat and the stuff I was being put in the middle of with the storyline with Ian Bartholomew [Geoff Metcalfe] and Shelley King [Yasmeen Metcalfe] then meeting and working with Millie Gibson [Kelly Neelan] and having much more to do with Georgia, it just meant that the subsequent two years since have been such a joy."
And after having such a good couple of years on the ITV soap, the decision to finally leave appeared much harder. "I was enjoying myself so much there and constantly being challenged and put in front of some of the most talented people I’ve ever worked with. I’ve said it before and I’ll continue to say it, Millie and the young people that Corrie has invested in in recent years are just revelations. Each and every one of them is astoundingly good.
"But that meant I saw a version of myself that would be staying there until I was booted or whatever and I came to the realisation that I have no spouse, no car, no mortgage, or kid, all these things that would otherwise necessitate consistency and I thought if I don’t close my eyes and step off into the void now, I never will."
Charlie makes it clear it was nothing to do with the job or Corrie, and says he had a "wonderful" time of the nation’s most famous street. "It was just if not now, when? And if not now, possibly never" he added.
The 32-year-old discovered Imran’s fate in a Zoom call, alongside Georgia, before Christmas as they were given a run-down of what was to come. “He [Iain MacLeod - Corrie’s producer] was giving a very detailed run down of the degradation of Imran’s character which I was all fond of," Charlie said before Iain dropped the death bombshell leaving him taken aback and having to ask to repeat what he said.
"Initially it was ‘Oh my God, this is amazing,’ and then once the news settled in, it was like, ‘Oh no’. It this really them salting the earth because they dislike me that much that they don’t want anything to do with me anymore and this is their opportunity to see me out for good."
But Iain soon reassured Charlie that that wasn’t the case and told him it wasn’t an 'easy' decision but that there "really was no other option for him [Imran]." However, he did admit that there was a ‘version of him’ that ‘would have liked to have gone back’ in years to come like on-screen wfie Georgia did with her character.
"All the things I love about the place now, I would have been drawn back for those same reasons," Charlie said. "But that option has been taken off the table so I have no other option to look forward."
