Pat Phelan’s long-lost daughter Nicola Rubenstein made her first appearance in Coronation Street this week.
She’s Seb Franklin’s case worker who asks Phelan to give the teen an apprenticeship once he’s released from the Young Offenders institute.
Nicola Thorp, who hit headlines last year after campaigning to stop women being forced to wear high heels to work, plays Nicola, but she reveals Nicola had no idea who Phelan was the first time she met him.
“She has no idea this man could be her father,” she told Digital Spy.
“Her parents are both dead as far as she was aware. There are a few occasions where she catches him being a little bit off and she thinks perhaps something is not quite right.”
When Nicola gives Phelan her business card, he notices her surname and the cogs of his brain start ticking. As he remembers her mother – and then the fact they had an affair about nine months before Nicola would have been born – Phelan realises he’s a daddy.
“When Phelan suggests he might be her father, initially as anyone would, you’d be in denial and then quite angry.
“But Nicola is the light in Phelan’s life.
“What’s interesting is it would be easy for her to be a do-gooder, but she’s got a really feisty side to her. There’s a couple of bits I hope the audience likes where they are at loggerheads – she can give as good as she gets!”
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Well, Pat Phelan’s daughter was bound to be a feisty one.
As she struggles to process the fact she has a father she never knew about, it sounds like she’s going to have quite an affect on the killer builder.
He’s already murdered Andy Carver and stood back and watched Michael Rodwell die of a heart attack when Phelan possibly could have saved him.
And he’s spent most of his time on the Street conning other residents out of money and pulling off scams.
He seems to love wife Eileen Grimshaw, but we’re sure he’d kill her as soon as look at her if she crossed him.
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Will Nicola change Phelan into a good man? Will he give up his dodgy schemes and murderous intentions in order to make up for all the years he missed out on as a dad?
Would he be any fun if he turned into an angel though?