He wreaks havoc on Corrie’s cobblestones as snake-like businessman Ray Crosby, yet actor Mark Frost could have played the Weatherfield villain.
Mark has already auditioned to play some other villainous character on Coronation Street, but the role was for something else.
And things could have been very different if Mark had landed the other part.
He opted for the role of Pat Phelan’s partner Vinny Ashford, who played former Emmerdale star Ian Kelsey.
Fortunately for Mark, he didn’t get the part, as Vinny had a creepy ending in 2017.
Vinny has partnered with his old friend Phelan in the dubious progression of Calcutta Street apartments to defraud hopeful owners and let them down their hard-earned money.
Vinny made a place out of the cash Phelan controlled to convince him by befriending his mother Flora at his nursing home. He then took Vinny hostage along with his neighbor Andy Carver, whom he had held captive for months in a sloping basement of an old factory. and forced Andy to kill him before killing Andy and throwing the two bodies into the lake in the development of a factory.
“I auditioned for the role earlier, Pat Phelan’s partner played Ian Kelsey,” Mark said.
In 2018, Vinny and Andy’s bodies were recovered via Phelan after learning that the lake needed to be drained.
In horrific scenes, the serial killer placed them in a column at the foundations of the mill and lit the concrete.
Builders Gary Windass and Seb Franklin revealed the bodies enclosed in concrete after an intrusion into the structure where Phelan worked.
After confessing his crimes, Phelan gave the impression of immersing himself in his appearance of death from a lighthouse in a confrontation with his wife Eileen, but had hidden.
He then stabbed his nemesis Anna Windass after returning to the street and making a terrifying siege on the wedding day of Michelle Connor and Robert Preston.
Mark, 52, appreciates that of the dreaded Ray.
“I was surprised by the fact that it was well written,” said Mark, a long-time Corrie fan who grew up watching the show.
“I told him I could burn temporarily and brightly, so I’m already on parole,” he laughs.
Describing his character, he says that the owner of the ” bistro has slipped down the street like a snake” and that there have been many fan theories as the audience finds out what he’s been there to do since he arrived last year. .
Mark also runs a furniture and antiques store called Frost in Peckham and was interviewed at the store about Corrie.
Describing the reaction he got from Corrie fans, he said, “It was lovely, lots of screams and calls.
“I have a fan coming to check for updates.
“Overall, it has been very positive.
‘A user ran towards me in the crowd at Euston station before closing and said ‘you had already’.
“He came here with a smile.
“Some other people turned around and gave me a stick.
“Some manchesterers say “I love Ray “as if he were a role model. “
Nasty Ray, guilty of Michelle Connor’s conduct, played through Kym Marsh, away from Weatherfield in December.
After gathering him, he later revealed that the secret client of the bistro previously pierced her and her fiancé Robert Preston.
She then blackmailed Kevin Webster into giving up her garage after her friend Abi Franklin set him on fire.
He said he had photographs of Abi’s dashboard camera and forced her to agree to sleep with him.
But when she came to a hotel to meet him, he fired her after taking clandestine photographs as proof that she was in a position to do so.
Kevin, who discovered Abi after his fiancée with Ray, was furious when he found out.
Mark added: “He’s cheeky in a way and absolutely with who he is.
“I grew up seeing Johnny Briggs as Mike and Larry Hagman as JR, so I think he’s in that mold.
“Someone who has achieved his own good fortune and believes that hard paintings and determination can bring him anything.
“I don’t think it’s psychotic or violent consistent with it. I just don’t think he likes it when he gets angry.
“He would be determined to take revenge, but he would hire someone to do his dirty work.
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“It’s more than Phelan. “
Ray is about to be in the middle of another dramatic plot when he opens a huge chasm in Platts’ back garden and is the first to step forward and offer the family circle accommodation of choice in one of its hotels.
But the audience will realize that Ray really is the abyss and, as Kevin’s garage owner, it is part of a larger lot to buy more assets on the street.
Corrie is planned on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
Starting Monday, the opera returns to six episodes a week at 7:30 p. m. 8:30 p. m.