Coronation Street's Dolly-Rose Campbell shares real reason she's learning to sign and honest reaction to working with five kids on set
22.05.2023 - 07:19
/ manchestereveningnews.co.uk
It's been a couple of years now since Dolly-Rose Campbell's Coronation Street character brought sign language to the scene in the ITV soap. Back in 2021, viewers saw Gemma Winter sign for the first time after one of her and partner Chesney Brown's quads, Aled, was diagnosed with profound deafness.
The couple were torn over whether their son should have an implant operation and in the meantime, Gemma started to learn British Sign Language (BSL) and sought the help of Freda Burgess and a BSL teacher called Charlie. But Gemma was later left horrified when Freda took Aled away after learning of the mum's decision over Aled's implant.
But after their worrying hostage situation, Aled later had the cochlear implant and late last year, Gemma and her mum Bernie, played by Jane Hazlegrove, staged a sit-in at her stepson Joseph's school when the teacher told him off for using sign language at school.
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And it's not just Gemma who has a passion for learning sign language as Dolly-Rose has also put in the work behind the scenes and is currently working on her British Sign Language Level 2 Certificate. "It's getting quite difficult but I am enjoying it," the actress, who has appeared as Gemma in Corrie since 2014, told the Manchester Evening News and other press.
Asked why she decided to learn personally to sign, Dolly explained: "For me, we were going to have a deaf actor on set as part of our family and he can't learn not to be deaf so it made sense for me or Sam [Aston] or Jane [Hazlegrove] to learn to sign so that we can help him when he needs help.
"The actor that we've got, his parents are also deaf so it's nice to be able to sit and talk to them when they