'Coronation Street' actress Bhavna Limbachia wants her character Rana Nazir and girlfriend Kate Connor to have a "big, fat, gay Muslim wedding".
Bhavna Limbachia
The actress has played nurse Rana on the ITV soap since 2016 and has been involved in one of the most popular storylines in the past several months as her alter ego embarked on an intense affair with Kate, played by Faye Brookes, behind the back of her husband Zeedan Nazir (Qasim Akhtar).
Rana admits there are more testing times ahead for Rana after scenes filmed on location recently showed her parents trying to take her out of the country and away from her lesbian lover, but she hopes eventually the couple - dubbed Kana by fans - will get a happy ending.
Asked by Digital Spy if the characters can ever be happy together Bhayna, 33, said: "We hope so. They've already been through so much to be together. They've been fighting their feelings. I hope they will be. They genuinely do love each other. Rana doesn't want to label her sexuality. As far as she's concerned, she's fallen in love with somebody who happens to be a woman. So hopefully they are together. We'd love to see a big, fat gay Muslim wedding."
However, she still hinted at the trouble that lies ahead, with Rana's parents set to kidnap their daughter to prevent her blossoming relationship with Kate,
Bhavna explained: "At the moment, Kate and Rana are enjoying being together. They've still got the financial agreement with the parents. Unfortunately they do find out and they try, in their minds, to put things right and save face for the community. Unfortunately things don't go to plan - that's all I can say."
It comes after Bhayna revealed she sat her mum down to ask how she felt about the lesbian storyline.
The former 'Citizen Khan' star - who is of Indian Hindu heritage - recently said: "I spoke to my mum about this because obviously being from an Indian background, I didn't know how she was going to react and what her opinion was about the LGBT community. I sat my mum down and I said, 'Mum, my character is turning gay, I'm going to have to kiss a woman on screen, how do you feel about that?' She didn't quite understand so I explained to her in Gujarati, 'This is what's happening, this is what people are going through.'
"She was quite shocked by it, you know, with it being a taboo subject within the Asian community, even in 2018, and she said, 'If you're going to help people then you've got my full support.'
"I wanted to know how she would feel if I was her daughter coming out as being gay."