Coronation Street icon Helen Worth reveals why she really quit the cobbles
Coronation Street legend Helen Worth quit the soap after she grew "tired" and was "rattling a bit" in her 50th and final year as Weatherfield's Gail Platt.
Helen Worth quit Coronation Street because she grew "tired" in her final year on the cobbles.
The Corrie icon was part of the show's furniture for 50 years as Gail Platt, but she bowed out of the legendary role on Christmas Day 2024 after she had started to "rattle a bit" in her half a century in Weatherfield.
According to The Sun, she said at event An Evening with Helen Worth at Hope Mill Theatre: "It was only a bit towards the end when I got a bit tired. But the first, how many years? 49 years, were a dream.
"My final husband, John Thomson, was absolutely gorgeous to me, because by then I was rattling a bit.
"It was around about 4,000 episodes and I was rattling a little bit. And he was very sweet."
Helen admitted she didn't ever want her time on Corrie to "ever change", but admitted the filming schedule had got "worse" over the years.
She said: "It just went on and it didn’t stop until last year when I’d done 50 years.
"I mean there’s not many actors can say that and it just kept coming and I just kept loving it."
Helen was in conversation with former Coronation Street star Julie Hesmondhalgh at the event, and the Hayley Cropper actress said about her previous cobbles filming schedule: "You’d be burying your husband on the Monday, marrying him on the Tuesday ... you’re just like: 'Where am I, what am I doing.' "
Helen said: "It’s even worse than that now, because it can be a scene from one week, and then a scene from another episode, and then go back to the second week and do a scene in the same day."
The legendary actress briefly reprised her role as Gail Platt on Christmas Day 2025 in a video call to her family.
Gail left Weatherfield to start a new life in France a year earlier, on Christmas Day 2024, after marrying Jesse Chadwick (John Thomson).
But she almost didn't marry Jesse after finding out he was moving to the South of France to convert a villa using laundered cash.
However, they eventually said "I do" in the Viaduct Bistro.
The newlyweds later jetted off to France, despite Gail initially being hesitant to leave behind her children Nick (Ben Price), David (Jack P. Shepherd) and Sarah (Tina O'Brien).
