There’s a lot to discover about Maggie Driscoll (Picture: ITV)
Just when Eva Price (Catherine Tyldesley) thought her mother-in-law couldn’t get any worse.
Coronation Street fans may remember actress Pauline McLynn from Father Ted as Mrs Doyle, the cuppa obsessed house-keeper of Craggy Island.
Now she’s spilling the tea in a different way entirely as Maggie Driscoll, the formidable new landlady of the Rover’s Return and Eva’s worst nightmare.
When Eva returned to Weatherfield in 2025, she was delighted to take over her family’s old pub with her partner Ben Driscoll (Aaron McCusker). However, there was a catch – an acid-tongued Irish monster in law.
Becoming co-owner of the Rovers, Maggie has made no secret of her disdain for her son’s new girlfriend and the two warring landladies have clashed over everything from cocktails to karaoke.
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Previous Page Next PageThere may be no love lost with Eva, but Maggie’s a loving mum to Ben, and dotes on her grandsons Will (Lucas Hodgson-Wale) and Ollie (Raphael Akuwudike).
Her fierce protective streak comes from a good place, as proved when she comforted Asha Alahan through her panic attack in Victoria Gardens, gently persuading her to seek mental health assessment.
However, viewers are about to see a much darker side to Maggie, and it goes way beyond a barbed remark.
In an upcoming special flashback episode focusing on Maggie’s birthday, tensions fly in the Rovers as we learn that there’s more to the Driscoll Family dynamic than we ever imagined.
Pauline McLynn sheds light on the significant of her character’s special day. ‘It is going to be a very big birthday.’ She teases.
Maggie celebrates her birthday soon (Picture: ITV)
‘She’s 65, which is a nod to the show’s anniversary. When it comes to events, Maggie is like anybody who’s the head of the family. You put on your game face every day, you go out, and you do what you have to; you put on a performance. During the birthday is we get to know a little bit more of the personal Maggie, whether she likes it or not.’
But this isn’t your typical soap flashback. We’re going back many years into the past, and Pauline is here for it.
‘This was properly going back in time. The art department, the costume department, and the makeup team did such a great job of putting it together because anything retrospective is really hard to get the look and the writing right. They are just so brilliant on that, and the detail is fabulous.’
What will this flashback look like? According to Pauline, as the birthday celebration, get underway, Maggie reflects on her younger days. Maggie has two sons, one who lives in Americans.
A flashback reveals more about Maggie’s past (Picture: ITV)
Most intriguingly at all, we see Maggie in her youth, and finally meet her husband – the mysterious Mister Driscoll. ‘For me, it was just the most magical, strange thing ever because there is a flashback scene that you see through Maggie’s eyes, and I got to meet the younger me.’
And what exactly is the younger Maggie’s big secret? Pauline doesn’t give much away, but she hints at a difficult family life.
‘It’s actually very moving when you see what happens in the flashback because it shows the difficulty of being a young mother. I won’t say whether she was happy or unhappy in the marriage; you can decide for yourself, because there’s no slant on it, it’s just presented as what happened.
Can’t wait for the next twist?
Hi, I’m Calli Kitson, Soaps reporter at Metro. I cover Emmerdale, EastEnders, Corrie and more.
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‘It’s intriguing, and it’s one of those things that you know when you see it, that this will have repercussions somewhere, somehow. It could be way down the line. We don’t know, so you’ll be waiting for somebody to say, “Can I just ask you…?” and then it’ll just take one question to unlock a whole load of things. It could even be a question from her son, Ben. It’s obviously something they don’t talk about.’
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Whatever Maggie’s secret is, it shaped her into the iron matriarch she is today. It could explain why she’s been so antagonistic to Eva, and how far she’ll go for her family.
‘She’s about protecting her boys’. Pauline insists. ‘ Right from the beginning, we know that that’s been a huge thing for her, and that’s why she’s so fierce. She’s terrifying when she’s like that. You’d be a fool not to be terrified of her, I think.’
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