For several months now, Jonny Baxter (Ray Quinn) and Stuart Sumner (Chris Simmons) have been radicalising Ste Hay (Kieron Richardson) in Hollyoaks. The far-right extremists have went out of their way to manipulate Ste, and and things escalated further this week when the young lad arranged a protest march in the village — with disastrous consequences.
Jonny’s arrival in the village late last year brought with it plenty of heartache for the residents of Hollyoaks. After claiming to be Ste’s long lost brother, the young extremist was able to prey on Ste’s vulnerability by using his vendetta with Misbah Maalik (Harvey Virdi) to manipulate him — which has resulted in Ste becoming increasingly racist towards the entire Maalik clan.
This week, things took a turn for the worse, when Ste set out to organise another protest march after inadvertently getting Stuart’s cancelled — but he did so by getting in touch with a group of extremists. The protest quickly descended into chaos, and violence ensued in the village — much to the detriment of Ste’s reputation as, afterwards, not only did his family turn their backs on him, Stuart and Jonny had seemingly washed their hands of him too.
However, the two extremists took delight in watching Ste apologise profusely — as it was all clearly part of their plan. With another opportunity to prove himself a loyal and worthy member of the cause in tonight’s episode, Ste’s set to pass the test and becomes a full-fledged member of the group. But what’s next for the character? With another shot, will Ste continue to descend even further?
Actor Kieron Richardson told Metro.co.uk: ‘In the next couple of weeks there will be more of what’s going on now. He’s been fully groomed and he’s been radicalised so what happens once you’ve been groomed? We show that side of the story.’ the actor said. ‘There’ll be some new characters introduced into Ste’s life also so we’ve been doing a little bit of that and — I’m guessing — building up to more protests.
‘The fact that he turned his back on his family and chosen Jonny and Stuart, it’s kind of just cemented the fact that it’s going to continue on — and he doesn’t seem to be looking over his shoulder at his family anytime soon. In his head right now it’s all about Jonny and Stuart.’
While Ste is more than willing to prove his loyalty to Jonny and Stuart, what do the two extremists have in store for the new member of their group? Kieron reckons they’ve got Ste right where they want him.
‘They’ve got this other soldier for their cause and they go out and do protests even though there’s been one that’s gone completely wrong this week. In their head, they wanted to do this peaceful one in their direction, but they didn’t get to do that because Ste messed it up, so now they’ve got him are they going to go back to their original plan of doing the protests and getting their message out there? Albeit the wrong message, but they’ve got Ste where they want him now.’
However, after what’s transpired during the latest episodes, Leela and Peri are more determined than ever to prove to Ste that Jonny’s not actually his brother. The biggest question here is — if Leela manages to do so — will Jonny be able to convince Ste otherwise? Ste is incredibly loyal towards Jonny, so Kieron reckons it’s that possible nothing will be able to turn Ste against the extremist.
He said: ‘He thinks of him as his brother — and he loves his family. Even though he’s just turned his back on Leela and Peri, he is a family man deep down so that’s why his head is going to be completely mashed when he finds out that in actual fact Jonny’s not his brother. But then they’ve got this new bond now — is their bond strong enough that he can forgive the lie?’
Hollyoaks continues on Wednesday 12th June at 7pm on E4.
Source: Read Full Article