Coronation Street star Natalie Amber has revealed the prejudice she has received in the industry over
her disability.
The actor appeared on the soap last year as Shelly Rossington, who struck up a friendship with Paul
Foreman amid his MND (motor neurone disease) storyline.
Natalie, who became a wheelchair user in her mid-thirties after an accident while performing, opened up about the increased difficulty she had in getting auditions after resuming work as a disabled actor.
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“The attitude was horrendous and the way they treated me was quite belittling,” she told The Mirror. “At auditions I’d be told bluntly: ‘No, your character wouldn’t be in a chair.’”
Recalling an “experiment” she undertook, Natalie revealed: “When I said I was in a wheelchair, I was hardly offered any auditions and when I didn’t mention it, stuff started coming through again.
“If I phoned ahead and asked if the audition was accessible, there would be a deadly silence, or I’d get silly comments like: ‘Are you sure you’re not going to get too tired to come to the audition?'”
Natalie also revealed that she’s been asked inappropriate questions about her disability by strangers in public, and had experiences where “people can be unpleasant, patronising and impatient”.
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She recalled one such experience in a workplace, saying: “The character was in an electric wheelchair and mine isn’t. The producer said they’d get one for me, but the director said: ‘We don’t have time, just do it in yours.’
“He then spoke to my personal assistant rather than me. Later on, he went: ‘You’re holding up production, you just need to hurry up.’ But at no point did anybody ask if we needed any help.”
However, Natalie did praise her experience on Coronation Street, saying co-stars Peter Ash and Daniel Brocklebank went “above and beyond” for her.
