It is unbelievable to think that 41-year-old Jane Danson has been playing Coronation Street’s Leanne Battersby on and off for nearly 23 years.
Of course, during that time Leanne has been through the usual soap opera mill – marriages, affairs… drugs, prostitution. But as Jane says, her current storyline, in which Leanne’s young son Oliver is diagnosed with an incurable condition, mitochondrial disease, ‘is the most harrowing one I’ve ever done’.
Although the show’s production has of course stopped because of coronavirus, Jane says that they still went ‘full pelt at it for six or seven weeks, but there’s a lot to play out yet’.