CORONATION Street’s newest villain is about to become the most hated woman in Britain – and it’s her first TV job.

Viewers watched on Wednesday as actress Beth Nixon made her debut on the ITV show as a paedophile PE coach with her 15-year-old victim Will Driscoll.

 

Joining the soap, Beth found it to be overwhelming at first – but has revealed just how twisted her character truly is.

She said: “It was super overwhelming in the Rovers because you’ve got loads of crew, and then all the cast in there as well, and you’re like, ‘Oh my God.’ But everyone’s so lovely.

“You’re all having little conversations and getting to know each other whilst also trying to film. When you’re filming with like 10-plus people, things are bound to go wrong, so you kind of have a laugh with each other in that way.

“That also puts you at ease and makes you realise it’s okay to make a mistake. Being in the Rovers is just fab, and I think I’m quite lucky with my character because she’s hiding this massive secret.

“I’m not coming in as a loud, confident character. She’s keeping herself in the background, so for me as an actor, as Beth, that allows me to enjoy it and sit back and kind of watch people. And for the first two days, I was just watching Corrie on set.”

Speaking about her character Megan, she added: “She’s very calculated. Everything she does is for a reason, but she’s very good at hiding that.

“She’s very insecure, but again, she hides it. So she’s very confident and charismatic on the outside; she charms people, she makes people feel sorry for her, she makes people like her. She’s worming her way into this family; she’s almost like a parasite.

“But as an actor, I obviously need to find that humanity in her and make her a rounded character. She’s not a one-dimensional character. She’s not just this evil person. She has all these other things going on – all these life experiences she’s had, which have led her up to this point. The audience doesn’t know, the other characters don’t know, but she knows.

“So, there are all these things I’ve decided in my preparation. She’s very insecure. She’s desperate to be loved; she’s desperate to be adored. And her reasons for that will eventually be uncovered, and we’ll dig deeper and find out more about her. But she’s a flawed person. She’s really complex as an actor you’ve got to delve deep and find a reason for why a person, a ‘villain’ as such is a loose term, behaves in that way.”

She said: “I guess you kind of have to know the story arc for a character like this. You’ve got to make a decision about whether you want to play that role.

“My agent spoke to me and said, ‘This is a dark storyline. Are you comfortable playing it?’ And obviously, you do think about it before you say yes, but it’s such a complex character and such a deep storyline that, as an actor, it’s just a dream to play. Because it’s so gritty, and it’s a real-life issue as well.

“So, pretty much straight away, I was like, ‘I want to audition.’ I did the tape, went to a chemistry test, and tested with a few different Wills. And then, a week later, I just got the call. I think I had a feeling because I’d never come for a recall or a chemistry test before; that was my first time doing that. And I guess third time lucky.”

But while it’s her first TV job – it wasn’t the first time she’d auditioned for Corrie.

“This is my first TV job, but not the first time I have auditioned for Corrie,” Beth added.

“I auditioned for the part of Lauren Bolton and then for a girl who was giving Lauren a hard time at the mother and baby unit. My agent called me and explained this role and asked if I wanted to audition.”

 

And while Megan is grooming and abusing Will, she’ll do anything to keep her cover – including seducing another cobbles resident after Lauren Bolton begins to become suspicious of her.

“We can see her slowly worm her way into the family and befriend Eva and Maggie and really get the women on side with her,” Beth said.

“They think she’s good for Will; they think she’s a brilliant mentor. So no one is suspecting anything at the moment. But we will see Lauren become suspicious because Lauren has obviously experienced something very similar to what Will’s going through. So she knows what to look for; she knows the signs and she spots them on the street.

“So Megan changes tack and decides to use Daniel as the cover-up. We get to sort of uncover how truly vile she can be. She will stop at nothing to come out on top and survive, basically.”

Soap bosses have worked with Barnados on the storyline that is set to play out over the coming months.

Beth said: “The writing is brilliant and the research team have been working with Barnados,  so much of the work has been done for me but I have read newspaper reports about court cases involving female teachers that are very similar to what Megan is doing.