Former Coronation Street star Nicola Thorp revealed the most horrific part of her stalking ordeal during Friday’s Good Morning Britain.

The actress, 35, who played Nicola Rubinstein in the Manchester-based soap, lifted the lid on how she was stalked and terrorised for two years between 2018 and 2020 by a man who called himself her ‘personal grim reaper’.

She opened up to hosts Kate Garraway, 57, and Adil Ray, 50, about what happened to her and the impact it’s had on her life.

Opening the conversation, a shocked Kate exclaimed: ‘Nicola I had no idea really about this, because that’s the situation isn’t is really when you’re being stalked, until it gets to a court case it’s a very isolating and terrifying experience.’

The soap actress explained: ‘I have to commend the police because when it came to reporting it to them, they did take it seriously, but I know I’m one of the lucky ones and I have a semi-public profile and I wonder if it was taken more seriously because of that.’

Copy link to paste in your message

Former Coronation Street star Nicola Thorp revealed the most horrific part of her stalking ordeal during Friday’s Good Morning Britain

Copy link to paste in your message

The actress, 35, opened up to hosts Kate Garraway , 57, and Adil Ray , 50, about what happened to her and the impact it’s had on her life

She revealed that she still doesn’t know what sparked the ordeal or how it began, but the first contact she’s aware of was when the stalker sent her a photograph of his genitalia.

As a women’s rights campaigner, Nicola keeps her direct messages open to the public in case anyone messages her for help.

She recalled: ‘It carried on and carried on and over the course of two years it eventually clicked that this is various different people but all the same person.

‘In fact he once pretended to be a woman who needed help to go to the police and report harassment and wanted me to meet up with “her” in real life and it actually turned out to be him – he didn’t show thank goodness.’

Casting her mind back to the day he was finally caught, she told Kate and Adil: ‘You’d think it would be a happy day when the police called me and said “We’ve arrested him, we’ve found him”.

‘I was elated, asking “Who is it? Who is this man?” They said “We can’t tell you”‘.

Silence filled the studio before Kate gasped: ‘That’s terrifying!’ after hearing the shocking revaluation.

Nicola continued: ‘It was very disturbing to me that I didn’t know what this man looked like, I didn’t know his name, I didn’t know where he lived. I begged the police for months and months to just tell me, give me some information.

Copy link to paste in your message

Nicola continued: ‘It was very disturbing to me that I didn’t know what this man looked like, I didn’t know his name, I didn’t know where he lived’

Copy link to paste in your 

Silence filled the studio before Kate gasped: ‘That’s terrifying!’ after hearing the shocking revaluation

Copy link to paste in your message

Elsewhere in the interview, the actress revealed that the first time she ever saw her stalker face-to-face was when they appeared in court together and she was behind him in the security queue

‘The most important thing for me is I wanted to know how tall he was because I wanted to know if he could carry me. I wanted to know how much a physical threat he would be.

‘And nothing for months until they eventually showed me a photograph very fleetingly of what he looked like and I actually had to go to court to find out what his name was.’

She admitted: ‘So that I think psychologically was difficult because he then became everyone that I met. The police wouldn’t even tell me if we was somebody that I knew, if he was an ex-partner.’

Elsewhere in the interview, the actress revealed that the first time she ever saw her stalker face-to-face was when they appeared in court together and she was behind him in the security queue.

‘You go through an airport style security system, you have to give your name in to a security guard,’ Nicola said.

‘I was there just trying to focus on what was happening and then I just heard this man in front of me say the name and I froze – it was him I was 30cm away.’

Taken aback by the interview, Kate gasped again while Adil exclaimed: ‘Goodness me’.

Nicola faced her stalker, schizophrenic Ravinderjit Dhillon, 30, at Snaresbrook Crown Court in east London back in December 2023 with her fiancé Nikesh Patel by her side – before he was sentenced to 30 months in jail.

Copy link to paste in your message

The actress played Nicola Rubinstein in Coronation Street (pictured in character)

Copy link to paste in your message

In an emotional witness statement, the actress told of her paranoia as the stalker referred to himself as the ‘Grim Reaper’ (pictured on This Morning in June 2023)

Nicola Thorp shares experience of being stalked for two years

Loaded: 0%

Progress: 0%

0:00

LIVE

In an emotional witness statement, the actress told of her paranoia as the stalker referred to himself as the ‘Grim Reaper’ as he used 25 different identities to target her and made sickening threats to choke and rape her.

‘I lived in fear that this anonymous man who had hounded me for years was in fact someone I knew,’ Ms Thorp told the court, as reported by The Sun.

‘If you don’t know who the person behind the keyboard is, he becomes everyone you meet and everyone you’ve ever met.

‘All that time he knew exactly who I was and I knew nothing of him.

‘When I was shown a photo of him it meant I had some freedom back, and only the freedom to run away if I saw him in the street.’

She said that she had grown terrified about what her ‘committed’ stalker would do as she starred in a play last April – realising that he would know exactly where she would be.

And her terror did not end when Dhillon was arrested – as she recalled that an abuser’s victims are most at risk when their tormentor is ‘cornered’.

Dhillon began his warped campaign when he sent the 34-year-old an intimate photo of himself in October 2018.

Sentencing Dhillon, Judge Rosa Dean said that she was ‘quite sure’ he had targeted Ms Thorp because of her celebrity alongside her ‘determination to call out abusive and misogynistic behaviour’.

She called the messages he sent to Ms Thorp ‘deeply offensive and very violent’ – saying they caused his victim to live ‘in constant fear’.

If you need help and advice, you can call the national stalking helpline on 0808 802 0300