Pregnant Coronation Street star Melissa Johns heartbroken over cruel 'cripple' jibe

Grantchester star Melissa Johns says pregnancy has finally taught her to love her body after years of loathing it. Her online announcement that She and her husband Dan Hampton were expecting prompted a flood of celebratory messages – and made her rethink her relationship with her body.

Born without a right forearm or hand, Melissa, 35 – who has also appeared in Coronation Street and Adolescence – says, “I was eight when I really started to feel I was different. We were playing tag in the playground and someone said, ‘If you touch Melissa, you’ve got Melissa disease.’ It was like a punch to my stomach.”

Aged six, she was in the local paper under the headline ‘Girl with one arm rides bike’. “Some of the other children would scream and run away when they saw me,” she adds.

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Even more shocking has been the ignorance of adults. Blissfully happy with Dan, a senior transport planner, she reveals, “On our honeymoon we had people saying to Dan right in front of me ‘Do you not mind?’ (referring to her disability) and one man called me ‘a cripple’.”

But, as a pregnant woman, she says people’s focus is now on her bump. “People have commented on my body all my life. Either it’s something horrible or something about me being inspirational.”

“But now people are talking about my body in a lovely way,” she says. “For once in my life it’s not about my disability, it’s about my bump.”

The disability activist revealed her pregnancy to her online followers last month alongside a picture taken on the beach with 36-year-old Dan – who she married in her native Herefordshire last year – cradling her bump.

“I have a strong history of loathing my body,” she admits. “It came from society telling me that my body was wrong. But there is so much positivity around pregnant bodies, and now I really do very much like what I see when I look in the mirror. It feels lovely.”

Like most first-time mums, Melissa feels both excitement and trepidation, but when people ask how she will cope, she says, “That just adds an extra layer of anxiety to the pressure that all first-time mums feel.

“We’re all worrying, how does this work? And on top of that I’m thinking, ‘What about when my husband is at work – will I be able to find a one-handed pram that I can collapse with one arm? How will I get the pram in and out of the car on my own? How will I drink a cup of coffee with my friends while holding the baby?’

“I feel like saying, ‘I don’t know yet, I haven’t worked it out, but I will find a way.’”

Steely determination has certainly served her well in life. A turning point came in her twenties after watching old camcorder footage of herself as a girl at a family party.

“I saw this happy little girl dancing and spinning, without a care in the world and thought, ‘I’m so sorry for the life I’m giving you,’” Melissa recalls.

She would hide her arm on dates, saying, “It would get to the third date and I’d have to tell them that I’d got one arm. I’d see that as winning, that I’d hidden it so well. I needed to control how people saw me. I thought that part of my body was ugly and they shouldn’t have to look at it.

“Now I know that winning is having a wonderful husband, where my disability doesn’t even come into play.”

Training at East 15 Acting School, she was one of the first disabled actors to win the Laurence Olivier Bursary Award and, in 2015 aged 25, she landed her first TV role, alongside Jo Joyner and Trevor Eve in the BBC One drama The Interceptor. Two years later she was cast in Coronation Street as Kate Connor’s girlfriend Imogen Pascoe.

She played school nurse Carla in Adolescence and joined Grantchester in 2021 as police station secretary Jennifer Scott. She is currently filming the 11th and final series, with series 10 due to air early next year. It will pick up where series nine ended, with Miss Scott finally kissing policeman Larry Peters.

“It’s been a will-they-won’t-they for many years,” says Melissa, who plans to work until two weeks before her baby is due in November.

On other shows, she’s been asked if scriptwriters can make reference to her arm, as the audience might wonder about it. “I don’t think in the six seasons I’ve been in Grantchester we’ve even brought it up,” she says.

“They couldn’t be more supportive. They’ve been so nice about my pregnancy, too.”

When Robson Green spotted her coming out of a lift as they began filming, his delight was obvious, she tell us. He said, ‘Oh, my gosh! Look! I’m just made up for you.’ And Kacey Ainsworth and Tessa Peake-Jones both went, ‘Oh! Can we touch it?’”

Melissa is working on a TV adaptation of Snatched, the one-woman show she wrote in 2022, exploring her experience of having explicit photos leaked online after her iCloud was hacked.

And, of course, she is looking forward to becoming a mum. “Because of looking very different to other people growing up, the world questioned whether I would have a family of my own,” she says. “Now, I’m in my own home, with my incredible husband and a baby on the way that I just can’t wait to hold and cuddle.”

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