Coronation Street’s Beverley Callard hits out at sexist colleagues after hearing them dub older actress ‘condemned meat’

CORONATION Street star Beverley Callard has hit out at the sexism she witnessed during her TV career.

The actress, who played Rovers landlady Liz McDonald for 31 years, revealed she overheard colleagues making cruel remarks about an older co-star who was filming a passionate love scene.

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While Beverley didn't specify the scene in question was from the ITV soap, she recalled: “I can remember years ago, quite a raunchy scene being filmed.

"The man and the woman were both in their 60s and they were about to go into a kissing scene. Some of the men in the Green Room, where all the actors sit, said about the woman: ‘Oh dear, condemned meat.’

“I’ve heard producers say: ‘Oh no, she’s past her sell-by date now.’ I think more often than not, in any mini-series or film, you will have the husband who is 55, with a 30 year-old wife.

"It’s so ageist. If they did that the other way round, with a 60 year-old woman with a 35 year-old husband, she would instantly be called a cougar.

“It’s silly it’s like that. We’re chipping away at it, but we’re not chipping away fast enough.”

Speaking at A Girls Night In with Melanie Blake, a live online event to launch the best-selling author’s raunchy new novel Ruthless Women, Beverley said the book reflected the real-life backstage rivalry she witnessed during her career.

The novel is set in the world of fictional TV soap Falcon Bay and sees the show’s stars involved in a vicious battle of the sexes, where they will do anything to stay in the job they love.

Beverley, 63, said: “I’ve worked with many ruthless women. I have seen where a beautiful young actress has come on set and a more mature actress has said to the costume department – put a cardigan on that actress.

"I’m not going to say who said it. We should be helping each other.”

Beverley also explained that lockdown had helped her make the decision to close the door forever on playing one of the cobbles most iconic characters.

She said: “I loved my time at Coronation Street. I’ve left a couple of times before and always said: ‘never say never,’ but this time it is never, I won’t go back again.

“Lockdown helped me make the massive decision, because it is a life-changing one. I’ve really begun to enjoy my life and I don’t want to be working 12 hours a day, 48 weeks a year.

“I want more time to be me. The first lockdown was really good for me and I had lots of time to contemplate and I decided that this time I would say never.

“It feels really empowering. We all spend our lives, more often than not, doing what we are told at work and I don’t want to do that anymore.

“Liz may well die. They did say when I handed my notice in - we’re not going to kill Liz, we do want you to come back. But now I’ve made that decision that I don’t want to go back, they may kill her off screen.”

Beverley also revealed that she and husband Jon McEwan, who she affectionately calls ‘Megas**g’, regularly shop at Jacqueline Gold’s Ann Summers sex store.

Earlier this month Beverley took to her Instagram to share a snap of herself wearing sexy stockings, paired with heeled leather boots, captioning the image: ‘Date night going well!’ 

She laughed: “Jon and I are Jacqueline’s best customers. He buys me things and I buy him things, or we buy ourselves things and we love it!”

Ruthless Women by Melanie Blake is available now at major bookstores and on Amazon.