Mikey North felt "a lot of pressure in each scene" while shooting one of Coronation Street’s main Christmas storylines.
The 33-year-old star’s character Gary Windass is to be heavily involved in the Weatherfield goings on over the festive period, which will see an armed siege take place when Derek Milligan (Craige Els) gets hold of an antique firearm and goes in search of Gary, but the actor "really enjoyed" the buzz of filming the plot.
Speaking to BANG Showbiz and other media, he said: "It’s a massive privilege. It’s a lot of pressure on each scene you do, but I really enjoyed it.
"There were long night shoots, so it’s always really exciting to do them.
"You’re in the green room at three in the morning trying to keep each other going.
"It was really good fun, and an honour to be given that story."
Mikey also revealed Gary and Craige will go head-to-head in a brawl at the top of a helter skelter at Weatherfield’s Winter Wonderland this Christmas.
He added: "Me and Craige have a nice fight at the top of the helter skelter, that was really good fun to film.
"We had stunt men but we did most of it ourselves."
Craige will grab the firearm while intoxicated, and Mikey admitted his co-star’s "drunk acting is second to none".
He said: "Craige was fantastic. He was an absolute pleasure to work with. He went down really well with all the cast, we were all really fond of him.
"His drunk acting is second to none. He manages to look absolutely smashed."
And he quipped: "Maybe he was?"
‘Corrie’ boss Iain MacLeod recently admitted the show’s bosses didn’t take the decision "lightly" to make an armed siege one of the main plots of the programme’s festive schedule.
He said: "I’m aware that the presence of firearms full-stop on ‘Coronation Street’ is very controversial, so it wasn’t a decision we took lightly.
"But it just felt that there was an interesting side-avenue to what Gary’s been doing that hadn’t really been explored yet.
"Doing something involving a firearm felt like a realistic pay-off for the story we’ve been telling about loan sharking, the pressures of poverty, and the mental collapse that can cause for people.
"It felt motivated but also exciting and we wanted to slightly subvert people’s expectations of what they might get from a ‘Corrie’ Christmas episode.
"There is a view that Coronation Street should embrace guns at its peril."
Mikey North’s Corrie Christmas ‘pressure’
