Sir Ian McKellen is a legend in his own right, there is no denying that! However, the actor recently revealed that he was slated to appear on Emmerdale, but the character got banned! Iam recently appeared on, This Morning, where he revealed that he had the trilling and super cool idea of appearing on every soap as the same character.
He had won rave reviews for his character Lionel Hipkiss– a con artist. He portrayed the role in ten insanely entertaining episodes on Coronation Street in 2005. He created havoc by pretending to be an author called Mel Hutchwright. He tried to trick the street’s book club into funding the publishing of his nonexistent novel.
However, Lionel was exposed when Ken Barlow found out his truth and told everyone before he could do much damage by running a scam. “‘I was playing a conman, and I was found out so I can never go back as that character as they’ll know who I am. I had the idea that I might go into other soaps as the same character,” Ian spilled on This Morning.
He revealed that Emmerdale had initially agreed to his idea and wanted to get him onboard to play the character on the soap. In fact, he was also on the verge of calling up BBC’s EastEnders to hop on to the idea, Unfortunately, he had to give it up when Corrie’s creator, the late Tony Warren, expressed his disapproval and pushed Ian to drop the idea.
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‘Tony Warren who invented Coronation Street said “Absolutely not, the soaps do not recognize each other and you may not be that character anywhere else”,’ Ian recalled. In complete honesty, it is such a shame that Ian’s brilliant idea didn’t pan out. It would have been absolutely thrilling to watch him play the same con man in all three iconic soaps. It would have perhaps gone down in soap history!
Well, maybe the soaps will take a cue now! So, stay tuned to Soap Opera Daily for more Emmerdale spoilers and updates for more developments on this! Meanwhile, do you remember seeing Lionel? Tell us in the comments.