Coronation Street to introduce first black family in the show's history

The Bailey family consists of, Father Edison, mother Aggie and their grown-up sons Michael and James and they will move into No.3 after buying the house from Norris Cole (Malcolm Hebden), who was last seen leaving Weatherfield in 2017 to go and visit friend Emily Bishop (Eileen Derbyshire)

While Coronation Street has previously featured black characters, this is the first time a black family has been introduced.

Trevor Michael Georges will play builder Edison, who takes over the builder's yard with son Michael (CBeebies House' presenter Ryan Russell) and Lorna Laidlaw is set to star as matriarch and pharmacy assistant Aggie.

Is this confirmation that Gary will lose control of the builder's yard?

Previous characters have included Lloyd Mullaney played by Craig Charles and his daughter Jenna played by Krissi Bohn and Tyrone Dobb's ex parter Kirsty Soames who he has daughter Ruby with.

There have been no full-time black characters since the departure of Mary's daughter-in-law Angie Appleton (Victoria Ekanoye) in January.

Producer Iain MacLeod told ITV, "The north-west and Great Britain as a whole is a big melting pot of people from different backgrounds and ethnicities and the more representative we can make Corrie of Manchester and Britain the better really.

"It was a no-brainer, but I mean, as with anything on Coronation Street, it was the characters that came first and (the Baileys) were just instantly likeable.

"Manchester has a lot of black residents so it did feel sort of overdue we did this and represented modern Manchester a bit more accurately."

The addition of the new family will help the soap to explore the themes of racism and homophobia in sport as 19-year-old Weatherfield County footballer James (played by musical theatre star Nathan Graham) is due to come out as gay in an upcoming storyline.

MacLeod continued: "We wanted to look at a modern story about a young, gay man. It won't be your normal coming out story where we see James wrestling with his sexuality.

"We were quite keen that he knows who he is but has some apprehensiveness about telling his parents, has a lot of apprehensiveness about his teammates potentially finding out."

Check out these past and present Corrie stars on the red carpet!

Coronation Street airs on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 7.30pm and 8.30pm on ITV.

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• Coronation Street
• ITV