Coronation Street star Antony Cotton says 'Manchester is a beacon' as he prepares for Pride
In 1999 - some 24 years ago - Coronation Street actor Antony Cotton was staying at Manchester’s Kimpton Clocktower Hotel on Oxford Road (then the Palace Hotel) as he filmed scenes for his first big role in Queer as Folk on Canal Street.
At the time, Antony and the rest of the cast of the iconic Russell T. Davies show could barely imagine how the show would go on to impact not only LGBTQ+ people across the country but Manchester’s gay scene.
So it is a pinnacle moment, he admits, as he proudly returns to that very same hotel to kick off this year’s Manchester Pride as part of a roundtable discussion with the festival’s partner Booking.com. “It all began here in this very hotel for me,” Antony, from Bury, tells the M.E.N. “This is where we all stayed when nobody knew that Queer As Folk existed.
That show changed the world and it changed how gay people were depicted in television dramas. I’m not just saying that because it was important to us, but it really was a game-changer and it still is today.” Join our FREE LGBTQ+ WhatsApp group by clicking here Antony, 48, says that without that show his role as Sean Tully in Coronation Street, who was first introduced to the soap in 2003 and still remains a prominent character today, would not have happened.
