Corrie star Emrhys Cooper reveals family was ‘sucked in by cults’

Emrhys Cooper has revealed his family was “sucked in by cults”.

The 39-year-old actor, who plays the fitness buff Rowan Cunliffe in ‘Coronation Street’, has admitted his family were indoctrinated by cults and phoney health experts during his childhood.

Speaking to the Daily Mirror newspaper, he said: “My parents did wind up in a cult. It was actually kind of a wellness, fitness, more of a spiritual cult.

“And as they got further and further in, and gave more money, it became more sinister.

“Basically, the cult tried to separate my parents by doing these rather sexual exercises with other people, which my Dad was a little alarmed by because he was having to grope this woman and my Mum was having to do this thing with someone else. So they kind of cottoned on that this exercise programme was not all it was cracked up to be.”

The soap star explained that his mother was convinced by the cult to reject medicine, which “severely affected” her health.

He said: “Growing up in Totnes, a very new-age town and a breeding hub of gurus and holistic doctors, my parents encountered quite a few Rowan-types over the years.

“I didn’t really understand it growing up. But as I got older and witnessed firsthand some of the dangers of these types of characters, my mother’s health was severely affected by some very dangerous advice she received, which is still incredibly upsetting to me.

“My mother had a prescription for high blood pressure and a holistic doctor basically told her that he could get her off the prescription with some herbal remedy, and she had a heart attack.”

Emrhys said that after her G.P. had prescribed her medication for her condition, she refused to take it and instead listened to the cult, leaving her “paralysed”.

He explained: “She promised us that she would go back on the prescription, but unfortunately she didn’t.

“Four years ago she had a very severe stroke, which has left her paralysed and in a nursing home. So that could have been stopped if she hadn’t listened to that advice.”