Rachel Bailey’s mother – revealed

Updated: For reviews of series 3 start here.

Thanks to the lovely people over at Bonkers But Brilliant – the Nicola Walker fan site, I can reveal that the actress cast to play Rachel Bailey’s mum is…

Drum roll please

Tracie Bennett

According to the information released so far by ITV, Rachel’s mum, Sharon Bailey, will be a larger than life character and will feature heavily throughout the series.

So we know the who, but how about the why? Why was Rachel so surprised when she saw her mother in the pub at the end of the last episode of series 3? Well option five of my earlier post Who is Rachel Bailey’s mother? seems to be the closest to the truth.

Tracie Bennett was in Coronation Street. But that was way back in 1982. She played another Sharon then – Sharon Gaskell, the troubled foster daughter of Rita and Len Fairclough, returning to the street again in 1999 to reprise her role. So what has Tracie been doing since then? It might be easier to list what she hasn’t done.

Here’s a brief but by no means comprehensive rundown:

Doctors 2005-2007
Casualty 1992-2007, 2011
Dalziel and Pascoe 2007
Northern Lights 2006
Vincent 2005
The Royal 2005
The Long Firm 2004
The Courtroom 2004
Keen Eddie 2003
Murder Investigation Team 2003
The Bill 1993-2003
Burn It 2003

As you can see from the highlighted examples above, Tracie has quite a track record of starring in police procedurals/crime dramas. Two worth noting are Vincent, which also starred Suranne Jones and The Long Firm, in which she played Judy Garland, a role she’s made her own in the West End, on Broadway and most recently on stage in Hollywood.

According to the press release from ITV, Sharon Bailey will be flapping her vocal chords at a Karaoke night during one of the episodes. I don’t want to reveal how or why as that would be too much of a spoiler. But I can say she’ll be singing Don’t Stop Me Now by Queen. According to Tracie, who knows Brian May through his wife Anita Dobson (major soap star), she wanted to apologise to the Queen guitarist personally for “murdering” the song.

For transmission time, read Scott and Bailey series 3 – transmission date

Personally I can’t wait for the third series – how about you?