Ashley comforted Gail over her ordeal with Richard and forgave her over his cause in Maxine's death. Creation and development Speaking of playing Richard, Capron said: "He’s a wonderful character to play and I’m enjoying every minute of it. I love the fact that Richard has two sides to him, there’s the loving family man and the psychopath. He’s got a real dark side to him, it’s kind of like a psychopathic nature. He comes across as this normal nice guy on the outside but if people knew what he’d done they’d be stunned. In his head I think he seriously believes he loves his family but who knows what goes on in his head." In January 2002, it was rumored that Coronation Street executive producer Carolyn Reynolds would be axing a number of characters in a bid for the show to beat BBC One soap opera EastEnders in the ratings. Characters that were rumored to be axed were Eileen Grimshaw (Sue Cleaver) and sons Jason Grimshaw (Ryan Thomas) and Todd Grimshaw (Bruno Langley), Dev Alahan (Jimmi Harkishin), Shelley Unwin (Sally Lindsay) as well as Richard. A source commented: "It’s Carolyn ‘Chainsaw’ Reynolds from here on in. There's that much chopping to do that if she used an axe it would take forever. The former producer Brian Park chopped his way through nine characters, but Carolyn is close to knocking off a dozen. It hasn't done much for cast morale. Only last year the top earners had to sign up for pay cuts or face the chop themselves. New "strong" characters will be brought in over the coming months, but the number will be limited in order to keep the wage bill down." These rumors were later proved to be false. Richard Hillman is renowned as one of the greatest soap villains of all time. Throughout his time on the soap, he turned from a conniving fraudster into a fully-fledged serial killer – becoming known as 'Killman' Hillman by the press. He murdered one Street resident along with his second wife, before attempting to kill several others – including his own wife, two stepchildren, and stepgranddaughter – as well as being partly responsible for the death of Duggie Ferguson. Throughout these storylines ITV used elaborate trailers using the phrase 'Killer Corrie' which later was used to describe other storylines. Asked how are people reacting to the storyline Brian Capron said