Raquel Watts
Raquel Watts | |||||||||||||||||||||
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Past; regular | |||||||||||||||||||||
Introduced by | Mervyn Watson (1991) Jane MacNaught (2000) | ||||||||||||||||||||
Spin-off appearances | Coronation Street: The Cruise (1995) | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Raquel Watts (also Wolstenhulme) is a fictional character from the British ITV soap opera Coronation Street, played by Sarah Lancashire from 23 January 1991 until 15 November 1996. Lancashire returned on 2 January 2000 for one episode.
Storylines
Raquel is established as the daughter of a strict
Raquel renews her friendship with Curly, who falls in love with her and proposes. Although Raquel accepts, she tells Des that she loves him, not Curly and decides to break off the engagement. The following year, Curly's boss Leo Firman (John Elmes) attempts to rape Raquel. She manages to escape and tells Curly, who attacks Leo. Raquel gives evidence of sexual harassment against him and Leo is fired. She and Curly grow closer in the aftermath. Though Raquel sleeps with Des again, he makes it clear that it was just a one-night stand, and Raquel accepts that she will never mean as much to Des as he does to her. Later that day, Raquel proposes to Curly. They have a quick register office wedding, and it is not until their honeymoon that Raquel admits what happened with Des. Curly forgives her, and their married life is initially happy. It does not last, however, and within a year Raquel leaves Curly to accept an aromatherapy job in Kuala Lumpur.
Four years later, Raquel visits Curly seeking a divorce. She reveals that she was pregnant when she left and they have a daughter, Alice Diana Watts. She tells Curly that she couldn't stay in Kuala Lumpur once her pregnancy was revealed and got a new job as a housekeeper in France following Alice's birth, where she fell in love with her employer, by whom she is now pregnant and wishes to marry. Curly agrees to a divorce, giving Raquel's new relationship his blessing. Two years later, Bet mentions that she keeps in touch with Raquel who is still happily married and now also has a son.
Creation and characterisation
Raquel was created by Coronation Street writer John Stevenson. His starting point was Bettabuys supermarket—a Northern "everyman" chain—and a conceptualisation of characters that might populate it. A Miss Bettabuy competition was suggested as a humorous storyline, with comedy derived from the contradiction between a beauty contest and the "prosaic and mundane" setting of Bettabuys. From this, the name Raquel Wolstenhulme was devised, contrasting the glamorous Hollywood connotations of 'Raquel' with the down-to-earth Northern surname 'Wolstenhulme'. This glamorous/mundane contradiction was then encapsulated in the character.[1]
Raquel filled the
Lancashire initially had reservations about Raquel's characterisation, and believes that the writers were uncertain how to use her in early episodes. She found her two-dimensional, with an unappealing "acidic side" which could have resulted in Raquel becoming the "street bitch" had it been embellished. She took it upon herself to highlight Raquel's potential, playing against what had been written to make her more comic, evoking the sympathy of the audience. Thereafter, Raquel was often used for comedic purposes, though Lancashire attempted to keep her from becoming simply a figure of fun.[8] During one storyline, she was taught French by Weatherfield teacher Ken Barlow (William Roache), leading to what Richardson named one of the series' best comedy scenes:
Raquel: "I met a French man in Corfu who taught me how to say isn't it a lovely day today."
Ken: "Right, let's put a sentence together. I want you to say to me in French 'Hello Ken. My name is Raquel. Isn't it a lovely day today?'
Raquel: "Ooh, clever. Right, here goes. Bonjour Ken. Je m'appelle Raquel.
Voulez vous coucher avec moi ce soir?"[9]
The Independent's Deborah Ross feels that Lancashire bought "vulnerability and heartache and real tragedy and painful gullibility" to Raquel, citing the French lesson with Ken and the pride in Raquel's response as an example of her amusing but sad brilliance.[5]
In her book Soap Opera, Dorothy Hobson suggests that Raquel epitomised the representation of Northern working-class women during the 1990s: "Raquel articulated the hopes of many young women in her position. The character was complex; one that the whole audience loved, she was naive, gentle, and although she looked as if she would break men's hearts, for the most part it was her own heart that was broken."[1] Hobson deemed Raquel's breakdown at the registry office prior to her marriage to Curly "one of the most poignant and heartbreaking of any scene in a soap opera, or indeed in any other dramas."[1] She felt that in sobbing with awareness that she was marrying not for love but security, Raquel "spoke of the young working-class women, bright, intelligent, who had been failed by the education system, thus united the shared cultural knowledge of the audience as she wept for herself and millions of other women like her."[1]
Casting and development
Lancashire is the daughter of
Lancashire remained in the series until 1996, and was paid £90,000 annually.
Her departure was spread over three episodes, including an hour-long special. Her final scenes attracted 20 million viewers.[13] Lancashire briefly reprised the role in 2000, with series producer Jane Macnaught deeming Raquel one of Coronation Street's most popular ever characters and her return an opportunity for her "millions of fans" to learn what had happened to her in the intervening years.[13] Lancashire and Kennedy were the only cast members to appear in Raquel's return episode, marking the first time the programme had featured just two characters. It remained the only two-hander episode of the soap for seven years, until a 2007 episode featured only mother and daughter Deirdre (Anne Kirkbride) and Tracy Barlow (Kate Ford).[15]
Reception
Raquel was well received by critics, deemed by Banks-Smith to be "the jewel in the Rovers' crown".[16] She called Lancashire "one of the bright particular stars of Coronation Street", writing that Raquel, "as is the strange way of stars, shines bright long after the star itself has gone."[17] Reviewing the two-hander episode between Raquel and Curly, Banks-Smith called it "profoundly melancholic", describing Raquel as, "the barmaid every man dreamed would serve him, leaning like the blessed damozel from the gold bar of heaven, backed by shining spirits in bottles. A barmaid in excelsis. Beautiful as a daffodil though not as bright. A fine comic creation but entirely without a sense of humour."[18] Ross, a long-standing fan of Coronation Street, classes Raquel as one of the programme's greatest characters, alongside Elsie Tanner (Pat Phoenix) and Hilda Ogden (Jean Alexander), all "as brilliantly watchable as anything you might see at the National".[5]
In a 2010 feature examining Coronation Street's matriarchs, Daily Mirror columnist Tony Stewart named Raquel his favourite, deeming her one of the programme's funniest characters.[4] Considering the ten best soap opera Christmas moments, Guardian writer Daniel Martin included the 1994 Coronation Street episode in which Curly names a star after Raquel, praising it as an example of the producers not taking the "easy option" of a Christmas Day wedding.[19] The Sunday Tribune's Diarmuid Doyle lauded the way Raquel overcame the blonde stereotype, "balancing her ditziness with real warmth and likeability and becoming one of the show's best-loved characters in the 1990s."[2] Raquel had a celebrity fan in Cliff Richard, who admitted in the 2000 documentary 40 Years on Coronation Street that he once dreamed of being cast in a walk-on role, rescuing Raquel from Curly and marrying her himself.[20] In 2010, The Guardian listed Raquel as one of the 10 best Coronation Street characters of all time.[21]
Raquel has become a notable facet of Lancashire's career. In 2001, The Guardian's
In 1998, writers from Inside Soap published an article about the top ten characters they wanted to return to soap. Raquel was featured and they described her as "the dizzy blonde barmaid and would-be model who married Curly Watts when she was on the rebound from Des Barnes."[26]
In other media
Raquel and Curly are the central characters of Coronation Street – The Cruise, a 75 minute special following their honeymoon, which was released on
References
- ^ ISBN 978-0-7456-2655-0. Retrieved 5 January 2011.
- ^ a b Doyle, Diarmuid (5 December 2010). "I've been a wild Rover for many's a year". Sunday Tribune. Tribune Newspapers. Retrieved 5 January 2011.
- ^ "Soap tarts with a heart". Virgin Media. Retrieved 5 January 2011.
- ^ Trinity Mirror. Retrieved 5 January 2011.
- ^ a b c d Ross, Deborah (24 January 2000). "Streetwise". The Independent. London, England: Independent Print Limited. Retrieved 6 February 2011.[dead link]
- ^ Banks-Smith, Nancy (14 August 2009). "Coronation Street". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 February 2011.
- News Corporation. Retrieved 6 February 2011.
- ^ a b c d e f Thompson, Ben (20 August 1995). "Real Lives: She refuses to be photographed out of character, and is always on her guard against those who would make Raquel a figure of fun. Joining Coronation Street really is like joining the Royal Family". The Independent. London, England: Independent Print Limited. Retrieved 6 February 2011.
- ^ a b c Richardson, Anne (3 December 2010). "Corrie's Best Characters: No 6 – Raquel Watts". AOL Television. AOL. Retrieved 5 January 2011.
- ^ Purser, Philip (8 November 2004). "Geoffrey Lancashire". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 February 2011.
- ^ "Drama Faces – Sarah Lancashire". BBC Online. Retrieved 6 February 2011.
- News Corporation. Retrieved 6 February 2011.
- ^ a b c d "Raquel's Corrie comeback". BBC News. 25 November 1999. Retrieved 5 January 2011.
- Trinity Mirror. Retrieved 6 February 2011.
- ^ Viner, Brian (9 December 2010). "Fifty things you didn't know about The Street". The Independent. London, England: Independent Print Limited. Retrieved 6 February 2011.
- ^ Banks-Smith, Nancy (29 July 2003). "Roy of the Rovers". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 February 2011.
- ^ Banks-Smith, Nancy (9 April 2002). "Who's the daddy?". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 February 2011.
- ^ Banks-Smith, Nancy (3 January 2000). "Timing is everything". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 February 2011.
- ^ Martin, Daniel (23 December 2007). "Favourite Christmas soap moments". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 February 2011.
- ^ Deans, Jason (29 November 2000). "All eyes on Corrie". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 February 2011.
- ^ Clapp, Susannah (21 November 2010). "The 10 best Coronation Street characters". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 3 January 2019. Retrieved 3 January 2018.
- ^ McLean, Gareth (3 December 2001). "Black holes, white elephants". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 February 2011.
- ^ Flynn, Paul (26 June 2004). "A moment in the sun". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 February 2011.
- ^ Mangan, Lucy (1 April 2009). "Last night's TV: All The Small Things". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 February 2011.
- ^ Channel 5.)
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(help - ^ "10 stars we wish would come back". Inside Soap (102). (Attic Futura UK): 28, 29. 30 May – 12 June 1998.
- ^ MacDonald, Marianne (10 April 1996). "'Street' cruises for fall over video's brief honeymoon". The Independent. London, England: Independent Print Limited. Retrieved 6 February 2011.