When Coronation Street decided that the culmination of the story of Justin Rutherford (Andrew Still) stalking Daisy Midgeley (Charlotte Jordan) would be for Ryan Connor (Ryan Prescott) to be disfigured in an acid attack that Justin meant for Daisy, one of the key factors was to make the attack and particularly the aftermath be realistic.
‘I think it is one of the most important things to show in the storyline,’ Ryan Prescott told Metro.co.uk. ‘Acid attack survivors can go through hundreds of operations, multiple skin grafts, years of facial reconstruction, a lifetime of trauma therapy and PTSD in trying to get to grips with certain factors, whether that be societal factors or identity factors. Trauma has this impact on people; it’s always there and you are always carrying a part of it.
‘Ryan is still in denial and will probably still be in denial for the next year ahead. It is a very long process and we want to show this. Obviously in the parameters of soap you have to take into account the speed of the show, timings of things and how busy the show actually is, but one of the things that we wanted to be inclusive in the story is having a long term aftermath which shows the difficulties of going through something like this. The real road to recovery is the psychological road to recovery and that one never ends. And Ryan is starting to learn this.’
One of the first steps that the character has to take is to confront his injuries and the change to his appearance and Ryan described an emotional incident early on in his recovery.
‘There is a moment when a little girl looks at Ryan. She is so innocent and Ryan sees in her eyes her reaction to him; fear. Ryan knows that because she is a young child, her reaction to him is organic and natural and is probably going to be the response from everyone else regardless of how they cover it. The little girl’s reaction is so raw that it triggers Ryan.
‘Once his facial injuries are revealed to him, it knocks it right out of him again,’ the actor continued.
‘The initial glances are heartbreaking. The first time he sees his face, he is thinking, “I am never going to have love in my life again. I am going to be the one that people look at in the street.” In that moment, all those feelings he was trying to ignore come rushing to the surface and he realises that there is no way this is going to heal and he is going to look like his burns haven’t been there. It confirms to him that this is going to affect every aspect of the rest of his life, no matter what.’
Ryan believes that the incident and its aftermath are bound to change his character permanently.
‘It is going to make him grow. All pain is where we grow as people in general,’ he told us.
‘Ryan is shifting out of that happy-go-lucky, almost naive, opportunist character. He has a comic streak but this event will deepen him and round his character. Ryan doesn’t look the same as he used to and he won’t for a very long time so these are the things that are going to impact him along the way.
‘He’s going to change, his whole world is going to change and the way he behaves is going to change. He is going through real trauma, real despair and real heartache.’
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