Amy Robbins, who returned to Coronation Street as Christina Boyd last year, has spoken about the support she receives from her actor husband Robert Daws. The couple, who met on the set of The Royal, frequently travel together between their home in the South of England and Manchester, where the ITV soap is filmed.
Life between South and North
Robbins, who became a regular cast member last year, has a flat in Manchester for filming. She told the Mirror and other press that she balances life between the South and the North because she loves her job. Her husband often accompanies her on the commute.
She explained: "Well, luckily, my kids are grown up now. I mean, they haven't left home as such. One's at university, so she's at home a lot of the time. She has incredibly long holidays from university. But she's old enough to look after herself."
Working as a team
Robbins added: "We've got a flat up in Manchester, and mostly my husband comes with me. But we've always been like that, Bob and I, because we met on The Royal many years ago. And so we often work together, and we work as a team."
She continued: "If I go away, he tends to come with me, and vice versa. Now that the kids are older, we can do that. We just spend our lives going up and down the motor way. Got two little houses, a little house down here, a little house up there. You make it work, because if you love your job, it doesn't feel stressful, you know? If I was hating it, it would be awful and tired and exhausting, but because I love it, you just go, let's do it!"
Enjoying a rounded character
Robbins also spoke about enjoying a new side to Christina, who was initially something of a villain when she first appeared in 2023. She said: "Playing a villain is fun for a while, but it's quite limiting. It's frustrating when your character is constantly coming out of a scene looking like a monster. It's lovely to feel more rounded. It's much more fulfilling from an acting point of view to play a rounded character."
She added: "It's very important to have stuff written that would explain to you as the actor why somebody is the way they are, because you have to fill in the gaps yourself. So I was always trying to, when she was just sort of much more plainly and simply awful. It's very helpful for an actor to be given a backstory, because if you don't get a backstory, you have to make it up yourself, which I sort of had anyway. You've got to always find the reason why somebody's a pain, or difficult, or seemingly a bad person. There's always a reason for it. And it's been very helpful to me to find the reasons why, and I think it all makes total sense for her, actually."
Coronation Street airs weeknights at 8:30pm on ITV1 and ITV X.
