Shelley King has described her Coronation Street character Yasmeen Nazir as a "cornered animal" as her coercive and controlling relationship with Geoff Metcalfe comes to a head.
Shelley King: Corrie’s Yasmeen is a cornered animal ahead of Geoff attack
Fans have been left horrified by the disturbing turn in the dynamic between the soap couple and Yasmeen will eventually lash out in retaliation.
King told ITV's This Morning: "This has been going on, it started two years ago. And if you look back at Geoff's first introduction, he is a hail-fellow-well-met and we seem to love him. We all love him, because he's great.
"But it's been a slow drip, a gradual escalation of abuse so it's not an attack, she's defending herself. It's her instinct, she's a cornered animal… she doesn't even know in that instance what is actually happening to her."
She added: "At moments of great stress, operations, accidents. We, in order to survive, cannot remember the pain that we are feeling. The incident is blurred.
"All Yasmeen is thinking of, in the scene that you will see tonight, is her survival and she really can't remember, she is in deep shock. She really can't remember exactly what has happened.
"All she can remember is Geoff and her being there. Geoff coming to her, the abuse continuing and then he's on the floor. She doesn't even remember the interim.
"I remember asking the people in Women's Aid if there was any sort of repetitive factor in the process of controlling relationships and although they at first said, 'Well no, they are indiscriminate', the more we talked about it, there was something that emerged and that is that the perpetrator often seems to target an ostensibly strong person because, in a lot of instances, people who display strength, strength is just a [mechanism] to protect somebody who is quite vulnerable.
"I think if you look back at Yasmeen's history you will see that she is in fact hugely vulnerable.
"She's lost her husband, she's lost her son, she's lost her grandson, so she's open and it also gives the perpetrator a greater sense of victory."