ITV Coronation Street star Calum Lill warns violent predator Joel Deering is about to get much worse

While the relief that Lauren Bolton (Cait Fitton) is actually alive in Coronation Street means that evil Joel Deering is not a killer, actor Calum Lill was warned Metro.co.uk not to relax – as his villainous alter-ego is set to get much worse.

A desperate man, Joel will do anything to stop the truth of his nature coming to light, which means that Lauren is in as much danger as ever.

Given she is back in Weatherfield and a loose cannon, this in turn will make Joel more dangerous than ever, as the Calum explained in our exclusive video chat recently.

‘One thing we definitely know from this is that he is very selfish,’ he pondered. ‘He puts his own self-interest above all else, and he seems to lack the empathy that regular people have.

‘So, when you add all of them together, I don’t think we’ve seen the worst of him yet. And who knows where that’s going to go?’

A special episode airing tonight (Tuesday July 9) will finally show the truth of what happened between Joel and Lauren, taking us through from the moment they met beyond the point that he left her to die after beating her with a table leg.

It’s an intense watch and focuses entirely on one story strand, with Calum and co-star Cait doing the bulk of the heavy lifting screen-time wise.

As Joel grabs Lauren at the hospital, they have it out in private, and flashbacks paint a very dark picture of just how sinister he is.

It was an episode both actors were determined to get right.

‘Initially, we felt a big responsibility, because I don’t think anything like that’s been done on Corrie before – an hour ep like that that’s this kind of two-hander,’ he shared with us.

‘And we’re both relatively new to the show, so we felt a huge responsibility on our shoulders to do it right. We were behind until nine, ten o’clock most nights leading up to it, just going through the script line by line, taking it to Mark Hudson at Manchester School of Acting to rehearse it and go through it.

‘So, we really wanted to make sure we did it justice. The writing was fantastic. Ian Kershaw, who wrote it, Richard Lynn and Kev Boyle who directed it… Everyone else had put so much work into it, so we just had to make sure that we did it right and brought our A-game.’

While we have known for some time that Joel had a hand in Lauren’s disappearance, the pair haven’t worked together much. Some of the flashback scenes were filmed a while ago but, aside from those and the very brief encounter when Lauren met Joel as her lawyer, the pair hadn’t done much work together.

It involved putting a lot of trust in one another as they certainly are not easy scenes to play – well, they definitely aren’t to watch, either, as you will no doubt agree.

Addressing working with his co-star, Calum went on: ‘I’d been in the show six months before we filmed a scene together.  We filmed the attack scene in December, and then filmed the rest of the episode a couple of months ago.

‘The attack scene was one day, and then we didn’t work with each other again, but every time we were in the green room and something came up in her script, or my script, we’d talk to each other about it to build this picture up of what was going on off camera.

‘So, we had this world built in our heads before we got to it, then once we got the flashbacks in script form, we’d kind of imagined that something like this had happened, so it all slotted into place.’

After watching, there will be two big questions on the lips of viewers. Firstly, when will we see Joel get a comeuppance?

Calum was coy on details, but he indicated it wouldn’t be for a while yet.

‘I obviously can’t say, but my ideal one would be drag it out as long as possible because it’s such a nice place to work and everyone’s so amazing.

‘So, I’d just rather it take as long as possible, whatever it is, and spend more time with amazing people. Everyone here has been incredible, in front and behind the camera.

‘I obviously can’t say – I don’t know how it ends! But they can take as long as they want, I’m happy with that!’

And the other question I mentioned? It’s obvious – just how will Calum’s gran, who had quite the viral response to discovering he was Lauren’s attacker – react to these even more harrowing flashbacks?

‘It’s going to break her heart, I think!’ he laughed. ‘That was a bad enough reaction. To be honest, it was that dark I’m not sure I want her to watch it! I might tell my family to maybe skip this one.

‘I don’t think I’ll film her again, because, bless her, she got really embarrassed. But she’s such a star now! She was shown on This Morning, Lorraine asked her to go on – Grandma said no!

‘I was like, “Grandma, you can’t say no to Lorraine!” But she was just too embarrassed. So, yeah, I won’t be filming it!’