CORONATION Street is set to air a harrowing health storyline for fan-favourite character Bethany Platt.
Bethany, played by Lucy Fallon, will face lifelong consequences after she decides to have cosmetic surgery abroad.
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Bethany returned to the cobbles at the end of 2023 after taking some time away from the ITV programme for personal projects and to give birth to her son.
As part of her return, she was embroiled in the dramatic storyline involving Lauren Bolton’s (Caitlin Fitton) disappearance.
But now she’s set to take centre stage with a huge storyline of her own.
This autumn, Coronation Street’s Bethany Platt is set to face a life-changing trauma when a cosmetic procedure in Turkey goes disastrously wrong.
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Teasing the upcoming scenes back in April, Lucy said: “There’s another huge plot coming up for her.
“I’m really excited,” she added.
In scenes airing this autumn, Bethany accepts a job with a cosmetic surgery company to write an advertorial on their new facility in Turkey after being approached by Debbie Webster (Sue Devaney).
She then makes the decision to undergo liposuction at the clinic.
But viewers will see Bethany in a critical condition after contracting sepsis as a result of a botched procedure, leading to her living with a permanent stoma.
Bethany’s boyfriend, Daniel Osborne (Rob Mallard), is the one to take a call from the Turkish hospital with the horrifying news that she is in intensive care and makes a dash to the airport.
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Things worsen as Bethany never declared the surgery to her travel insurance, leaving the Platt’s desperately trying to work out how to raise the funds needed to allow Bethany to be discharged.
The storyline comes as the UK has seen a significant rise in patients seeking corrective treatments from botched cosmetic surgeries performed abroad.
A 2023 study compiled by the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons highlighted the number of people needing hospital treatment in the UK after getting cosmetic surgery abroad increased by 94 per cent in three years, with procedures carried out in Turkey accounting for more than three quarters.
The same study also revealed a growing number of people who are returning to the UK with complications ranging from wound healing problems to life-threatening sepsis.
Coronation Street also took the decision to feature a character living with a stoma bag as just over 200,000 people in the UK (1 in 335 of the population) have one.
Each year, between 13,500 and 21,000 operations are carried out on the NHS, leading to stomas being formed.
Bethany Platt’s biggest Corrie storylines
Bethany is the daughter of Sarah Platt (Tina O’Brien) and her classmate Neil Fearns (Paul Holowaty). Sarah fell pregnant at the age of just 12-years-old, much to the horror of her family.
When she was a child, Bethany’s was involved in a major storyline when she took ecstasy tablets. This was when her uncle, David Platt (Jack P. Shepherd), hid them in her doll.
The character departed the soap in 2007 with her mum for a new life in Milan. Her return storyline saw the teenager run away back to Weatherfield with a new actress as Lucy Fallon took over the role.
Storylines since then have included major school bullying. Her teachers said she was skipping school as she told them that she was attending grief counselling. Sarah and David soon realised that Bethany intercepted letters and emails from the school. She was being tormented by a group of girls, which included her mainbully Lauren (Shannon Flynn).
Gary notices the bullying and reports it to the school. Due to several incidents, Lauren makes out that Bethany is the bully and they are both suspended. During this time, Bethany helps David out at the salon and Lauren comes in for a treatment. David then threatened her to leave his family alone. This was before she was expelled from the school after other girls came forward about the torment.
Bethany was later at the centre of one of Corrie’s darkest storylines when she fell under the spell of her older boyfriend and sexual predator Nathan Curtis. The controversial scenes saw Nathan groom and manipulate the 16-year-old before coercing her into sleeping with his friends, with one of them raping her.
The storyline was based on a real life story and also drew inspiration from the child sex abuse ring in Rochdale, which saw nine men jailed in 2012.
Speaking about the upcoming scenes, Lucy explained she’s “pleased” to be working on such a “hard-hitting” storyline.
“When I first heard about it, I was pleased that they have trusted me with it because it’s an important storyline and of course I really enjoy doing issue based storylines,” she said.
Lucy continued: “Obviously this is really hard-hitting, which is exciting from an actor’s point of view, but it does come with quite a lot of pressure and responsibility to get it right because this happens to real life people.
“The storyline is also incredibly important as there’s countless horror stories out there of people talking about their experiences of cosmetic surgery abroad. I really hope this storyline can make people rethink going abroad for cosmetic surgery.”
Coronation Street has been working closely with Colostomy UK to ensure the storyline will be told as accurately and sensitively as possible.
Giovanni Cinque, Marketing & Campaigns Manager at Colostomy UK, said: “We’re really excited that one of the UK’s most loved TV shows is going to feature a major character living with a stoma.
“Even though public awareness has grown considerably over the last few years thanks to a number of celebrities revealing they have had surgery, the challenges that the 200,000 plus people living with a stoma in the UK face are less known, which means that we as a society and as individuals are not as aware as we should be of the choices that we can make to positively improve their quality of life.
“We really hope that Bethany’s journey will go a long way in helping to educate the audience, and thus help to create a more Stoma Aware UK. It’s also been a pleasure for us to work with the behind-the-scenes teams at Coronation Street on this story,” he added.
