Coronation Street’s Calum Lill has been killing it as a suspected murderer on Coronation Street.

But one person is not amused: his gran. Calum’s alter ego, lawyer Joel Deering, was recently revealed to have battered the now-missing Lauren Bolton with a chair leg – making him the prime suspect of Corrie’s biggest whodunnit in years.

To say it came as a surprise to Calum’s gran Sue is an understatement. Calum, 28, was sitting next to her on the sofa when she first watched the episode – and his video of her priceless reaction has now gone viral on social media. “You mean to tell me my grandson’s a killer? You battered her!,” she asks. “I can’t believe that. Honest to goodness!”

The TikTok clip’s now been watched by a huge 8million people – more than watch Corrie itself – but Calum and Sue share a lot more than just a slew of new followers.

For, Calum – who got engaged to his long-term girlfriend Roberta McClarron this weekend – believes he owes his career to his gran’s sacrifices. Soap fan Sue who used her hard-earned money to pay for her grandson’s acting classes from the age of 14 – and she even ferried him backwards and forwards to his lessons.

“My grandma is so funny and I knew she wouldn’t be able to believe it,” says Calum of the now-famous clip.

“She’s a working class woman from Manchester; she’s so proud of me, but I knew her reaction would be priceless. We’d [always] watch Coronation Street together with a cup of tea and she used to drive me to my acting classes – from the age of 14.

“So to be able to watch this with her and share that moment was really nice and so special.”

Joel’s secret dark side is not the only thing Calum has been hiding from his loved ones.

He had been planning to propose to his long-term girlfriend Roberta for seven months – but fate kept getting in the way.

“I initially planned to propose in Galway over New Years but Roberta was ill for the whole trip,” he tells us. “So I couldn’t pop the question.

“So after seven months of the ring being locked in my dressing room at Corrie and four trips with it through airport security – my bag got searched every time; to say I was sweating is an understatement – I’m so glad for the ring to finally be on her finger!”

Calum’s success did not come easy. His mum initially paid for lessons but found it too hard to make ends meet. So his gran and grandfather decided to do whatever they could to find the funds instead.

“We weren’t a family with money,” Calum recalls. “And the classes weren’t cheap, so I’m glad that I can now make all that expense worth it for her.

“I started going to classes and auditioning when I was 14. I’ve spent half of my life trying to be an actor. Now I’m at Coronation Street it feels like it’s finally starting to pay off, which is fantastic.”

Calum joined as the charming lawyer, with a hidden dark side, last September. And he has treated Sue with a trip to the set, and the obligatory stop by the Rovers.

But while Sue couldn’t be more proud, Calum’s noticed a certain pattern to the parts he gets. Spoiler alert, it’s not a good one.

In real life the nanna’s boy is as friendly and charming as his screen character appears to be, yet he has only ever played villains on screen, ranging from a racist thug in Doctors, to a former jailbird drug addict in Holby City and corrupt cop, Carlton Smith, in Hollyoaks. Now with his Corrie character abusing and grooming 17-year-old girls, one might wonder if he’s getting a little typecast.

“I don’t know what that says about me!” he laughs. “I must have a dodgy face, because I’ve played a string of bad ‘uns!

“I’m working so I’m not complaining and villains are obviously great fun, but it would be nice to have a little break from playing baddies at some point and play someone a bit nicer – someone that my grandma would approve of!”

Calum just jests – he doesn’t want to bid goodbye to Joel anytime soon. It’s been too much work getting a foothold on the Cobbles to walk away.

As an average lad from a working class neighbourhood, he had no idea how to get into acting as a teen, but a series of events helped him on his way.

It began when he signed up to study for a GCSE in dance at school, but after finding out the drama students were going on a school trip to be extras in the BBC series Waterloo Road he begged his teachers to switch.

“I ran to my head of year and said I’d changed my mind and wanted to swap dance to acting and he said I was too late,” Calum recalls. “I said: ‘please, please, please’ and he agreed.”

When his class arrived on set at Waterloo Road Calum plucked up the courage to approach one of the show’s stars, Chelsee Heeley. After asking for advice, she told him to join a local theatre workshop.

Coronation Street
The storyline was massive for Coronation Street
He met her again when he got his 2021 role on Hollyoaks, where she now plays Goldie McQueen.

He says: “[It] was a nice circle. I said: ‘you won’t remember me, but you really helped me out and started me on the path, so thank you.’”

At 18 Callum moved to London to study for a degree in acting at the Arts Educational School, but it was a tough time. “To make ends meet I was doing 20-40 hours work on top of 50 hours a week at drama school,” he says. “I had three jobs, as a receptionist at a gym, as a barman and I was selling fragrances in Harrods, but I still wasn’t earning enough.”

Sheepishly, he adds: “I was hired as a waiter at Faberge in Kensington and Chelsea, but my first day was my last day. They were doing a launch and I was holding a tray full of champagne flutes while they did this presentation in front of all these super wealthy people.

“I was so exhausted from all the hours I was working I started to fall asleep and the whole tray fell out of my hand and onto the floor. There was glass everywhere and everyone went dead silent and turned round and looked at me.

“I said: ‘Don’t mind me!’ but there wasn’t a single laugh – they just looked as if to say: ‘What’s that peasant doing here?’ I was so embarrassed!”

After graduating, Calum took a job in sales at an indoor crazy golf club as he auditioned for role after role, including a small part as a solicitor on the cobbles in 2022, which he didn’t get.

“It’s demoralising, but it’s happened hundreds of times,” Calum reflects. “At auditions there’s about 100 nos for every one yes.”

Even after his stint on Hollyoaks, he wasn’t getting enough acting jobs to pay the bills, so was working as a car salesman when he auditioned for Joel.

Coronation Street
Calum has spoken out about the incredible efforts his nan went to when he was starting out ( Image: ITV)
He sold his last car on the morning he started the job at Coronation Street and walked from the car showroom to the studios.

And it’s not just his work life that is finally working out.

Onscreen Joel recently became engaged to fellow lawyer Dee-Dee Bailey (Channique Sterling-Brown).

And, in a case of life imitating art, Calum proposed to his real-life girlfriend marketing executive, Roberta, at the weekend, saying: “About time I made an honest woman of her.”

The actor was inundated with messages of congratulations from co-stars, including Channique, Georgia Taylor (Toyah Battersby), Elle Mulvaney (Amy Barlow) and Lucy Fallon (Bethany Platt).

Bethany is not as big a fan of Joel as Lucy is of Calum, of course. In the episode which sparked Sue’s viral clip, Joel is revealed to have been behind the tragic disappearance of Lauren (Cait Fitton) despite Roy Cropper having been arrested and held behind bars. Joel was shown having brutally hit Lauren over the head several times with a chair leg, before paying off a young woman, Ellie, in exchange for her silence. In upcoming weeks he makes contact with yet another vulnerable teenager.

Calum has known all along about his character’s dark side.

He says: “Before my screen test my agent made me aware that Joel wasn’t very nice. He was doing nasty things to 17 year-old girls. I thought it was quite dark, but a big challenge.”