The death of Billy Mayhew (Daniel Brocklebank) has hit the residents of Coronation Street hard. He was a good friend to a lot of people, and as the local vicar he was a spiritual guide to many.
But to Summer Spellman (Harriet Bibby), Billy was her dad.
‘There was a scene the other night where she was talking about the three-dad setup that she had with Todd (Gareth Pierce), Paul (Peter Ash) and Billy,’ Harriet Bibby recalled. ‘She compares Paul to almost like a big brother, and Todd is the funny one that she has this banter with, but Billy was the one who was like her proper dad, the one who was always there and took care of her.’
So soon after losing Paul, who died of MND in late 2024, this latest loss is devastating for Summer and leaves her in what Harriet described as ‘a whirlwind of grief.’
Summer reacts to the pain she’s in by turning to alcohol. Harriet told us that Summer isn’t behaving in a rational way in these scenes.
‘Summer’s not consciously living through this period of time. She’s just making decisions in the moment, and she’s not really aware of herself, because she’s just in complete shock because no one knew that Billy was going to die, and just absolutely heartbroken, because her whole world has just been flipped on its head. So, she’s acting quite impulsively.’
While Summer is struggling to deal with the loss of Billy, Harriet said that the funeral scenes were difficult to film for her on a personal level.
‘It was kind of bizarre, because Dan had only recently left,’ she recalled. ‘I don’t know if it was the same week or the week after, so it did feel very strange.’
Billy took Summer under his wing in 2017 when her father – Billy’s ex – died of cancer. So their relationship on the show goes back a long way on screen and the two actors have worked closely together for much of that time. Daniel Brocklebank recently confirmed the bond he has with his on-screen daughter with an Instagram post of them hugging tearfully as they finished filming together.
He wrote: ‘My final day today working with this beautiful human. I’ve loved playing her tv dad. What an honour it has been. An incredible woman. I shall miss her terribly. Thank goodness I’ll get to see her in real life for dinners, walks & cuddles.’
As well as missing her co-star, there was another reason that Harriet found filming Billy’s funeral felt bizarre, and that was the church building itself.
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‘iI felt really recently that we’d filmed Paul’s funeral in the same church,’ she said.
‘It was like we’d been in that church for Paul and Billy’s wedding, and then we’d been in that church for Paul’s funeral, and now we were back here again for Billy’s funeral. So, it felt like there’s so many moments that have happened in that church, moments of joy and moments of grief and all of these different things.
‘It was really emotional.’
