Will Mellor almost quit acting before he was cast in 'Mr. Bates vs the Post Office'.
Will Mellor was about to quit acting for good when the call came for him to star in Mr Bates vs the Post Office
The 47-year-old actor has been a regular face on British television since he was cast alongside hit BBC sitcom Sheridan Smith in 'Two Pints of Lager in a Packet of Crisps' in 2001 but admitted that he was on the verge of giving it all up when he got the call to star as subpostmaster Lee Castletone in the ITV1 drama based on the Post Office scandal which saw hundreds of subpostmasters wrongly accused of fraud because of a faulty system.
Speaking on his 'Two Pints of Will and Ralf' podcast, Will - who is married to dancer Michelle McSween - explained: "The day before I got the phone call from my agent about Mr Bates I was gonna give it up. I swear on my life. I said to my missus, ‘I don’t think I want to keep acting. It’s just not happening’. I’m hosting this thing called Cops Gone Bad and was thinking I might go down that route and do more presenting factual stuff."
But the former 'Strictly Come Dancing' contestant - who also plays drug lord Harvey Gaskell in 'Coronation Street' - explained that after pulling in more than 20 million viewers and propelling the search for justice for real-life victims of the scandal,, 'Mr Bates vs the Post Office' has become the "biggest drama" in a decade and could never have imagined its success.
He said: "It’s been the biggest drama I’ve ever done and the biggest drama of the last 10 years. You don’t know what tomorrow is going to bring, so don’t give up. We knew people would talk about it because it was a true story. But you could not even imagine how big it’s gone."
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