Corrie's Joel Deering actor's past TV roles and link to Hollyoaks star
Coronation Street's Joel Deering is at the centre of a big new storyline on the ITV soap, with huge twists ahead.
But this isn't Joel actor Calum Lill's first soap stint or his first link to Corrie. The actor has had other roles in shows including Hollyoaks, Waterloo Road, Doctors and Holby City before his latest character.
It wasn't smooth sailing for the actor though, with him almost giving up on acting life after a number of knock-backs. But things soon turned around for him, leading to him landing his dream role.
Speaking to The Mirror and other press, Calum spoke about his time before his Corrie role, and where fans may have seen him before. He discussed starting out as an extra despite never planning to study drama, and he went on to secure a scholarship and attended drama school - and one Hollyoaks actress helped set him on the path he's on now.
He explained: "I wasn't gonna do drama but then I found out that everyone that picked it got to go and be an extra on Waterloo Road, and I loved Waterloo Road. It was incredible. We're on set, I've never seen anything like it before, the amount of people and the lights and the cameras and the wires everywhere, and I was in a scene with Chelsee Healey, and I said to her, 'How did you get into this? I wouldn't even know where to start'.
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Coronation Street's Joel Deering is at the centre of a big new storyline"So she recommended some classes and that's how I first got into it really, and doing extra work and getting the first auditions." Calum revealed from there he graduated in 2018, and secured a small job on BBC daytime soap Doctors, before landing an episode on Holby City.
A "spanner was thrown into the works" due to the lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic, meaning things came to a halt but it wasn't long before he got auditions for Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks. He said: "I'd auditioned for Hollyoaks a couple of times and didn't get it.
"But the director from Holby City saw me at the audition, said I'll put a good word in for you, and then came back and was like right. I got to the final four for that job, but I didn't book it. And then at the end of 2020, I just got a call out of the blue offering about eight episodes in Hollyoaks.
"They said we remember you, you don't need to audition. So it was great. That was my first kind of longer job that was more than a couple of days." After working at a festival in 2022, he met the brother of former Corrie actor Rupert Hill, and Rupert advised Calum that if they liked him they'd be in touch.
Calum had had an unsuccessful audition with Corrie previously and was starting to worry it would never happen. But then last year he finally landed an audition, leading to him filming a screen test and making it to the final five for the role. Eventually after filming a further screen test, Calum was thrilled to get the role.
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