Harriet makes acting debut — at seven weeks!
Reporter: DAWN MARSDEN
Date published: 08 March 2011
Photo: Picture by GARETH LOWE
A new TV star in the making . . . Harriet Atkins, pictured with mum Samantha, makes her Coronation Street debut on Thursday.
MEET Harriet Atkins, the newest and youngest addition to the Coronation Street cast.
The Chadderton new-born landed the role of Fiz and John Stape’s baby Hope when she was just a week old.
Viewers saw Hope born three months prematurely following December’s tram crash and she has been in the neo-natal unit ever since.
Mum Samantha, of Brooms Park, said: “When I was in labour, a friend who owns a management company asked if I would be interested in my baby appearing on Coronation Street and it seemed like a bit of a joke at the time but then everything happened fast and it became a reality.
“We had to get a birth certificate, a work licence and a bank account for Harriet before she was a week old, it was really bizarre.”
Harriet, Samantha and husband Darren’s first child, has a six-month contract with the ITV soap.
Now seven weeks old, Harriet has a packed filming schedule for the role which she shares with Sadie Pilbury, from Stalybridge.
Samantha, a retail buyer, said: “On filming days, we take Harriet to the set, feed her and take her to wardrobe where she’s put into costume. When she’s done, she gets changed, fed and then taken home again.
“I don’t know whether she’s caught the acting bug yet, I think she’s oblivious to it all at the moment. No one has asked for her autograph yet.
“It’s been a surreal time — one minute I was giving birth, the next Harriet is auditioning for a TV role and then we’re walking down the cobbles on Coronation Street. She has her own diary now with all her filming diary with her work schedule in.
“We’ve met most of the cast and they all seem really nice. They’ve all been cooing over Harriet.”
Harriet will make her first screen appearance on Thursday — Samantha’s birthday — when viewers will see Fiz and John bring Hope home from hospital.
She said: “It seems like fate that her TV debut is on my birthday so we’ll get the whole family round and we’ll definitely record every episode she’s in. It’ll be a lovely thing for her to look back on when she’s older and it was an opportunity that we simply couldn’t turn down.”
