Coronation Street casts Liz and Jim McDonald’s ‘dead’ daughter Katie

Coronation Street has cast Hannah Ellis Ryan in the role of Katie, the child Liz McDonald has spent almost 30 years believing to be dead.

Hannah Ellis Ryan, 29, is an Australian-born actress who also runs Manchester’s Hope Mill theatre, and will play Katie who is said to arrive on the cobbles along with long-lost dad Jim when Charles Lawson returns to the street in the autumn.

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According to reports, Jim delivers the bombshell to estranged wife Liz that their daughter Katie did not die shortly after being born back in 1992 as they were told, and there was a mix-up at the hospital. Liz reels as she faces her offspring who explains she was adopted by a couple who then moved to Australia, but has been searching for her birth parents and tracked ex-soldier Jim down through his military records.

Lawson recently returned to filming at the ITV soap’s Manchester set, but details of the Katie storyline are still yet to be confirmed by Corrie, with the rumoured plot so far receiving a mixed reaction from fans on social media. Will the show really risk rewriting history with this fantastical twist?

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