Coronation Street star Farrel Hegarty has found much hilarity in a series of fake Facebook posts that suggest she is not only expecting a baby, but is engaged to be married.
The updates, which were added to the ‘Coronation Street Drama & Intrigue fan group’, seem to have been generated by artificial intelligence.
Taking to Instagram, the Lou Michaelis actress said that her friend had sent the posts which appeared over the weekend.
‘Huge congrats to Farrel Hegarty (also known as Lou Michaelis) who recently met up with his partner in Australia… and now they’ve shared the most heartwarming update: they’re going to have their first baby! Such a lovely new beginning beyond the soap opera world,’ the first one reads.
In complete and utter disbelief, Farrel says to the camera: ‘Um… um… my friend’s just sent me this.’
‘HIS? Why am I a boy?’ she then asks when noticing she had been misgendered.
‘Am I pregnant? The best thing is there’s quite a lot of comments, and they’re all like “Congratulations”. Hashtag baby joy, hashtag actor’s life. I am dying.’
She continued: ‘God, that’s really brightened up my day that. What a beautiful article. Well written, lots of research put into it. Better start thinking of some baby names!’
In a further Insta story she addresses another post, which said that ‘he’ was ‘getting married.’
Farrel then picked out her top five comments – mostly from people confused as to why she had been labelled as male.
Amid her laughter she exclaims: ‘I’m never deleting Facebook.’
Two hours later, posing with partner Tricia Stone and cradling their friend Nick, the actress wrote: ‘Happy to announce… it’s a boy!’
The bizarre fake news stories come just weeks after Coronation Street issued a statement to viewers, warning them to ‘be vigilant.’
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Having been made aware that audiences are being targeted by con artists pretending to be from the soap’s casting department, who were claiming to offer them a part in their favourite soap, an important message was shared.
‘We are aware that there are some accounts impersonating the Casting department at Coronation Street on social media platforms,’ it began.
‘Our Casting team only uses official methods of communication, this does not involve direct messages on Twitter or any other social media.
‘Please be careful when communicating online and report any concerns to the relevant platform.’
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