Coronation Street's Sue Cleaver 'planned' exit for years as she admits 'emotional' final scenes

Coronation Street star Sue Cleaver has revealed just how long she planned to leave the show as she teased what's to come in her 'emotional' final scenes.

The actress recently announced her plans to wave goodbye to Weatherfield after 25 years on-and-off in the iconic role of Eileen Grimshaw. She said in a statement: “I’ve had 25 privileged years of working on Coronation Street.

"The door is still firmly open, but as I reached my 60th year I decided it was time to embrace change, look for new adventures and live fearlessly."

As part of Eileen's departure from the cobbles, it's been revealed that Eileen's sister Julie Carp will return as Eileen prepares to leave the famous street. After almost ten years away, Julie is set to surprise her sister Eileen with actress Katy Cavanagh reprising the role.

Now, Sue has spoken more about her decision to leave Corrie during her latest appearance on the Loose Women panel. "I have decided after 25 wonderful years that it is time to hang Eileen back up in the prop cupboard," the actress said on Thursday (January 9).

" I've decided it's time to leave, they're keeping the door firmly open for me. It's just the right time!" She was then showed a montage of her best bits on Corrie as Eileen to which host Charlene White admitted she was teary after watching it.

Asked how she felt, Sue replied: "Emotional, emotional, I mean 25 years is a long long time! I went into that show when my son was, well he's 29 now, he was very young. It became my family..." She spoke about working with the show's icons and how her short stint soon became a long-running role.

She also revealed that she was now filming her exit scenes and had actually decided to quit over two years ago and told some of her I'm A Celebrity campmates, including Charlene, her decision back in 2022.

On now being able to talk about it and getting to work on her last scenes, Sue said "We've started dilming my exit storyline. The lovely Katy Cavanagh has come back who plays Julie and we've literally started filming that...

"It's going to be emotional, it's going to be hard. I've got a lot of friends there that I will still have a connection to, my husband is the lighting guy on it so I don't feel like I'm going too far."