Exclusive: Footballers’ Wives is returning… as a musical
Tanya Turner and the rest of the WAGs will be back – but this time, on stage
The ongoing Coleen Rooney-Rebekah Vardy saga saw fans calling for the much-missed drama Footballers’ Wives to return to screens.
And it seems we’re all in luck, with one of the show’s original co-creators, Maureen Chadwick, confirming she is bringing the drama of the original TV series to the stage for a brand new musical.
With music and lyrics written by Kath Gotts, the show will be based around the first series which followed super-bitch Tanya Turner as she struggled to keep her marriage afloat to footballer and lothario, Jason Turner, amidst groupies, meddling club chairmen, deception, betrayal and murder.
RadioTimes.com understands the show is unlikely to feature the main cast of Footballers’ Wives, with workshopping for casting beginning at the end of the year – with a view to hitting theatres in 2020.
There is currently no word on whether the guilty-pleasure melodrama will ever return to television, but, former producer and writer Liz Lake told RadioTimes.com that she would return “in a heartbeat.”
“If there’s an appetite for it, and enough people want it, it would be worth having that conversation,” she said. “Whatever job I do, I get people telling me they loved Footballers’ Wives. It was an escape and a bit of refreshing camp, but it was still really bold storytelling.
“I think we’d prefer to have an update than a reboot, a revival moving it forward. It’s more than just nostalgia, it’s about seeing what life is like now. Don’t think I haven’t thought about it - I’ve had various moments where I’ve thought, ‘Gosh, wouldn’t it be good to do a special tie-in with the World Cup or something?’”
However, Zoe Lucker, who played Tanya Turner in the original series, is more cautious about returning should it ever present itself as an opportunity.
“The thing that would worry me was if there was to be a reprise, what if it wasn’t as good?” she told RadioTimes.com. “I always panic about that. The fact that people still talk about it the way they do, I would hate for any of us to go back and for any of us to be disappointed and it would be such a shame.
“The original writers were so good. They were such intelligent, creative women and I’m pretty sure if a script was to come forward it would be as exciting as an original series, but you just don’t know and I would hate to disappoint.”
