Coronation Street star details secrets of filming final Joel Deering scenes including co-star 'hitting him in face'

Coronation Street star Calum Lill has shared some of the secrets of filming his final scenes as Joel Deering. The actor has officially bowed out of the ITV soap after 14 months of playing the twisted solicitor.

As fans know, Joel arrived onto the cobbles in September 2023 as a charming solicitor who Dee-Dee Bailey soon fell head over heels in love with. But under his smooth exterior Joel was hiding a dark secret - a penchant for younger, underprivileged girls.

When Lauren Bolton went missing in February of this year, it was later revealed that Joel was responsible, having abused his position as her duty solicitor, to subject her to a torrent of both physical and verbal abuse which led to her fleeing the street fearing for her life, and ended up fleeing the street following his vicious attack.

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But after the truth was starting to come out, thanks to his fiancée Dee-Dee Bailey and DS Lisa Swian, Joel was declared missing after he failed to show his face in court. In the scenes aired at the end of September, a warrant was issued for Joel's arrest as he was seemingly set to face his comeuppance for his twisted crimes, which included grooming Lauren Bolton.

After transferring money to Lauren, how the mother of his son Frankie and his ex-wife Emily, and leaving an emotional voicemail for his former fiancée Dee-Dee Bailey, Joel's car was found abandoned and it was believed Joel may have ended up taking his own life.

The police carried on investigating and it wasn't long before the case became a murder investigation after Joel's body was found floating down a river. However, it was confirmed he'd been killed with a heavy weapon before entering the water and several people were been put in the frame for his murder.

But on Friday night (November 15), Joel's murderer was revealed in a stunning episode which featured a series of flashbacks from the night of Joel’s murder, interspersed with DC Kit Green's police interviews, bringing what really happened on September 27th.

It was an eventful night for Joel, after Ronnie and Ed Bailey went after him with a crowbar, he was attacked by scorned ex Dee-Dee, threatened by Kit and pushed into the river by Max. But not before Lauren had delivered the killer blow amidst the train track confrontation.

The final scenes mean Calum's time as Joel has officially come to an end and he's revealed to the Manchester Evening News just what it was like to film them. The final episode was months in the planning with all the flashback scenes, which were filmed about 10 weeks ago and shot out of order like a jigsaw.

"I kind of left and came back," he told us. "I finished in July really, then just came back to film my final episode and it was nice to come back and see everyone. But when I came back, it was like we were filming a movie. One of the scenes, we spent 12 hours shooting. We had all these different cameras and green screens and special effects. I've never experienced anything like that before so it was incredible.

"I've played him nice, I've played him funny, I've played him boring, I've played him horrific, then I've managed to do the soap stuff on location and also on this movie set. Where we were filming, it was Peaky Blinders movie, House of Guinness, Talamasca, these big Hollywood films and then us. It was incredible to have gotten that opportunity so yeah it was amazing, I'm looking forward to seeing it, I can't wait."

A volume wall was used to film the scenes, so the cast weren't really on a railway bridge but was inside a Greater Manchester studio. "It was in Gorton, this massive huge black room," Calum shared. "The ceiling was probably about 70 feet high. It's just this massive semi-circle of screens and then you're set in the middle, so we've got this long railway bridge that we've built and that's on a table that turns.

"So instead of the camera moving, the camera stays where it is, the train track moves and the whole background is synced with the cameras. When the camera moves, the background moves as if the camera's moving in the real place. They go out to the real bridge, take 360 views of the whole place and then wire the camera up so the background scenes change. It's really hard [to explain], when you see it hopefully it will explain. It looks like the cameras are moving all around the bridge but the cameras never move. It's crazy but really cool."

But it was when the soap star was asked if he'd taken anything of Joel's with him a memento of his time playing the character when Calum revealed more details. "I've got the murder weapon at home," he said. "It's like a brick that would have been part of the bridge, so I've got the foam soft version. Not soft enough to be hit as hard as I was getting hit in the face repeatedly by Cait but softer than a brick nonetheless.

"Duncan the director was like: 'We can tell that you're being too gentle with him, go on, he's a big lad'. I was like: 'Cait, we've worked on this, this is the final, we've worked together for so long, sell this, this is the last bit, go for it'. She did! Luckily the next day of filming was just being dead on the train track, which was good because I needed a lie down! That's what I did for the next 12 hours."