EXCLUSIVE: Coronation Street star Denise Black told 'you're too fat and disabled for telly'
Coronation Street and Waterloo Road actress Denise Black was born with a condition affecting the muscles on her right arm, which got worse the more she tried to hide it on camera
Coronation Street seductress Denise Black has revealed how, as a young actress, she was told that she was too fat and too disabled to work in television. She earned millions of fans during her five years on the cobbles playing hairdresser Denise Osbourne, who had a passionate love affair with Ken Barlow, but says that some TV companies shockingly wrote her off.
Denise, 67, who was born with a condition that affects the muscles in her right arm - causing her fingers to cross over each other - says: “I’m not going to name the TV companies, but I’ve been told I’m too fat for television, I’m too disabled for television. All this kind of – ‘you’ve got to fit in and you don’t fit.’
“My experience of being a woman was a lack of self-esteem, a lack of certainty that I was right, a desire to please, to look good, to feel very chastened when people pointed out things that were wrong with me.”
Speaking to Kaye Adams on her How to be 60 podcast, she adds: “I’ve been told several times, by agents and television companies and photographers,’ you’ve got a lovely face; it’s a shame about your body.’ It lowers your self-esteem. I’m a great one for ‘love people as they are.’”
The actress, who joined Emmerdale in 2013 as Joanie Dingle, the adoptive grandmother of Amy Wyatt’s son Kyle, believes her condition worsened as a result of trying to hide it on screen for so long. She explains: “I think the reason it’s like this is because for 30 years I hid it out of the camera under the table, and it clawed over through lack of use. There’s a regret. I don’t think you get into your 60s without the odd regret.”
During the 1990s Denise was one of the best-known faces on TV when, as Ken Barlow’s mistress, she gave birth to his son Daniel. Despite her character’s stormy love life she says she didn’t realise at the time that she was seen as a femme fatale.
READ MORE: Coronation Street legend joins BBC soap after exit 28 years ago“I genuinely didn’t know,” she insists. “When I did a comeback, they put together a YouTube of ‘Who is Denise Osbourne?’ I looked at this woman. I went,‘Jesus, I was hot.’ I had no idea. I wish I’d known I was hot, but I didn’t.”
But her sixties have brought Denise increased confidence and she no longer worries about what other people think. “The joy of the 60s is you don’t care in the same way about people’s approval, because you know in your heart a bit better,” she explains.
Denise recently joined the cast of the popular BBC series Waterloo Road, playing Mo, the grandmother of Liam Scholes’ character Noel McManus. She can also currently be seen in the raunchy TV adaption of Jilly Cooper’s 1988 novel Rivals, playing frumpy straight-laced secretary Joyce Madden.
She says: “It’s the second shag-fest that I’ve been involved in, in which my character gets none. They did talk about something for Miss Madden and I said- ‘no, please’, because it’s horrible to have to film that stuff. Who doesn’t want to be in a hit show? It’s fantastic. I do enjoy Miss Madden very much. She is the invisible woman and I’ve never been cast as the invisible woman before. I look hilarious in it; I wear a wig.”
Denise says the roles she was offered changed significantly after she stopped colouring her hair when she turned 60. She says: “I grew out the dye. I was a magnolia colour for a play in 2018. After that I stopped dyeing my hair; it really affected the casting.
“I’m never going to play a mother again, I’m going to be a grandma. But my gambit is that I can be this age for maybe 20, 30 years, as long as I can learn the lines.”
She does feel slightly bothered that she won’t be cast as the ‘sexual interest’ again. “There is a bit of me feels, politically – ‘don’t ignore me just because I’ve got white hair and I’m 67,’” she says. “Doesn’t mean that I’m technically physically dead. I still live in my body, thank you very much!”
In Rivals, screened on Disney+, Denise plays the assistant to David Tennant’s character Lord Baddingham, the ruthless managing director of Corinium Television. And the debauchery and chauvinism in the show brought back memories of Denise’s own early days in television.
“I remembered things, really tricky things, really ‘MeToo’ type things that happened to me," she explains, "that you just took in your stride, because it’s how it was. I enjoyed that bridge back to the past, so that I can look at it a bit objectively.
“This is rich, spoiled b******s behaving despicably. And who doesn’t enjoy watching that? It feels both retro, but also pertinent.”
A TV actress for 36 years, Denise has had an illustrious career. One of her best loved roles was that of Hazel Tyler, the free-spirited mum that all gay men wanted, in Russell T Davies’ ground-breaking 1999 series Queer as Folk. She also returned to Coronation Street in 2007 and 2017.
After feeling discriminated against because of her disability in her early days as an actress, she says there was also a time when it won her invitations to audition. She explains: “Disability has become a bit more fashionable, but that has got a downside too. I went through a period where I was put up for castings where it said ‘people with a disability can apply for this role.’
“Now I have a problem with the word disability, because it’s ‘dis’, so it sort of suggests that you are less than complete. I felt a bit like I’ve been invited to join the freak show and that I wasn’t quite freakish enough. So, there’s still room for more change.”
Denise, who is married to musician Paul Sand and has two adult children, says she grew up never feeling that her disability would hold her back. “You’re only disabled when somebody tells you you’re disabled,” she explains. “I would argue that I wasn’t disabled, because that suggests I’ve lost something that I would otherwise have had. Whereas I felt really special. I’m not making it up, I felt special.
“We look at people and we go – ‘well, that’s good, they’ve got that, but it’s a shame that they’ve got that.’ No, it’s who they are. Just let them be. Big nose is lovely, jug ears lovely, dodgy teeth great!”
*Kaye Adams: How to be 60 is available on all podcast providers. Waterloo Road can be seen on Tuesday on BBC One at 9pm or on iPlayer.