Coronation Street star Julie Hesmondalgh has said that she has faced the “hardest” experience working on the play Punch, which tells the real-life story of how the bereaved mother of a son who was killed by one punch met with his killer.

Speaking about rehearsing a scene in front of the parents of James Hodgkinson, who died in 2011, Julie told ITV’s Loose Women: “One of the hardest things I’ve ever done is doing a run-through of the play in a really well-lit rehearsal room with David and Joan sitting there and it was a really dark moment for me,” she said.

It felt borderline exploitative – I was acting out some of the worst moments of their life while they were sitting there but because they are such incredible, very ordinary but incredible, generous and gracious people, they understood the need to tell this story.”

Coronation Street star Julie Hesmondalgh shares dark moment on project that felt ‘borderline exploitative’

“As we know from all these things and from Adolescence that I know you’ve been talking about a lot, telling these stories, this is why we need to fight for the arts constantly.”

Julie made her return to Loose Women on Thursday – 25 years after being a panellist herself on the show.

The star, who is best known for her role as Hayley Cropper on Coronation Street appeared as a panellist when the ITV daytime show was filmed in Manchester.

The star appeared in the Manchester based soap from 1998 to 2014, making her debut in January 1998 and her final scenes airing in January 2014. In heartbreaking scenes, soap fans saw Hayley end her life after being diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer.

She’s not the only Coronation Street star to have graced the Loose Women panel, as Eileen Grimshaw star Sue Cleaver became a regular panellist last year, following her guest stint in 2024.

It came shortly before Sue announced she’d be departing the soap after 25 years on the cobbles.

In a statement last year, the star said that the door “is still firmly open” to return to the soap but that she’s ready for “new adventures”.

“I’m leaving now – I’m 61 and this is what my new book is all about. I think we get to an age where society wants us just to shuffle off quietly and I really want to encourage other women that we have so much more to give,” she said during an interview on This Morning.

It was recently announced her on screen son, Jason Grimshaw played by Ryan Thomas would be making a return for her exit storyline