Barry Sloane interview

This week will see the start of Niall Rafferty's evil revenge plan on his real family, the McQueens. We caught up with Barry Sloane, who plays Niall, to find out about the upcoming explosion storyline...

What was it like filming the explosion scenes in the church?
It was unbelievable, it was some of the best stuff I've ever done and I loved it. It took us six days to complete but it was worth every minute. We did it in a big scary old church with like a priests training school up in Wigan.

Did you all have stunt doubles?
Yeah, mine was about 5'1" and James Sutton's (John Paul) double was about six foot but he was sat down so it looks alright.

Were you pleased with the storyline when the producers told you?
Yeah I haven't seen the final thing yet but, I was so pleased when I heard about the storyline.

It sounds like it's going to be really dramatic but this storyline has been building up for a year hasn't it?
Yeah when I first started all the girls were like 'I can't wait for the climax of this storyline' and I was saying that I'd barely got started on Niall yet. So finally, the people who have put in the time and patience watching the storyline are going to get paid back with this climax and hopefully they'll be pleased with it.

So what about Niall and Steph's relationship, are we going to see them grow closer before the explosion happens? Yeah, well before the church happens it all falls apart because he is caught being aggressive to Tom by shouting and screaming at him and when Steph sees this it all comes to a head.

Does he at any point want to confide in Steph do you think?
No, because I think there wasn't enough time to take the story down that route. Certainly from my point of view I think he'd have confided in Steph but the development of their relationship would have taken too long, we just didn’t have that sort of time scale.

It's quite sad because in the episodes before the church explosion it looks like Niall is turning his life around and he has this happy little family with Tom and Steph and he was settling down.

So will these episodes go out as an hour special?
No but they will be filmed so that the whole week is one day, so the whole week will be about this storyline. It's a really strong week, I'm going to say that, because I'm really proud of it!

Find out more about Barry Sloane at Niall's cast profile.