3 fan favourites killed off in Neighbours as the soap celebrates 35 years
Neighbours is set to take a dark and dramatic turn as it celebrates its 35th birthday, with three fan favourites killed off in a week of special episodes. And if that’s not enough there are even more surprises in store for fans this week.
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Neighbours is set to take a dark and dramatic turn as it celebrates its 35th birthday, with three fan favourites killed off in a week of special episodes.
The long-running soap is taking the shock game to rival Home And Away, whose fans were stunned earlier this year when two of its regulars were snuffed out in dramatic fashion — one murdered in a hospital siege and another after a car crash.
Neighbours producers are remaining coy on which Erinsborough residents are leaving town permanently or how they meet their untimely deaths but promise the special episodes are sure to send shockwaves through its dedicated fan base.
If a trio of take downs might seem like … overkill, they are tempering the losses with a feel good storyline too. That comes in the form of five weddings — surely a record for a TV series (that isn’t MAFS).
Former Bachelor Tim Robards, who joined the show in a guest role as businessman Pierce Greyson in 2018 and then as a permanent cast member last year, says Neighbours has changed significantly since he watched as a youngster.
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“I was watching when I was a teenager and it was pretty standard back then — relationships, love, someone comes into town, falls in love, breaks up,” he tells Insider.
“Now we’ve got so many diverse topics that we cover that are pretty relevant. At the end of the day it is a drama and it’s all fictional, but some of the stories are very representative of real life things going on and it’s done in a good way — it gets people thinking, creates a conversation.”
Robards, who spent nine years studying to work in health before bursting on to the scene as Australia’s first Bachelor, says he hopes the show’s diverse storylines help affect change.
“We do now have a PG rating so some of the topics delve a little deeper and discuss things that probably wouldn’t have been able to be done before,” he says.
“We’ve got the first transgender actor and storyline on Neighbours and there’s a conversation to be had there and you hope that it ends up making it more accepted, more understood for people who may not have thought about that or deal with that in their everyday life.”
Robards, who first got a taste for acting when he stood in as Keanu Reeves’ double during the filming of the second and third Matrix movies, almost blew his chance at landing on Ramsay St.
Flown down to Melbourne after producers liked his video audition tape, things didn’t go as planned.
Robards says it was easy to get it right when he could have “a hundred takes” at home, but when in the room opposite long-time cast member Stefan Dennis, it all went out the window.
“I walked into the audition room and Stefan came in and he’s just got such a deep voice and he’s in my face and we ended up doing the scene and all the lines just went out of my head,” he laughs.
“I couldn’t pull them together and we had to do numerous takes and I just thought ‘I’ve totally stuffed that’.”
He did another scene with April Rose Pengilly and nailed it and he got the call back on the day he was flying out to marry Anna Heinrich.
Pengilly, whose character Chloe Brennan has Huntington’s disease and was in a dramatic same-sex relationship with Jodi Anasta’s character Elly, joined the show in 2017 but says she’s still blown away by the gig.
“I still have those pinch-me moments where I’m like ‘oooh, I’m doing a scene with Toady — what is happening!” she laughs.
Chloe’s love story with Elly — nicknamed ‘Chelly’ by fans — had a big impact on large numbers of the audience and saw fans get in touch with both actors to offer feedback on what it meant to them to see themselves represented on the small screen.
“Even the producers said they had no idea it would be so popular — we’ve had young men and women come to Jodi and I to say how grateful they are,” Pengilly says.
“I get fans writing to me saying ‘your storyline helped me come out to my parents’ which is so touching, and we’re just blown away by it and so glad the show gave us the opportunity to portray that.”
Accurately representing the illness her character has is also important to Pengilly who made sure she was completely across the disease when she learned of it.
“I had never heard of Huntington’s disease,” she says.
“I did as much research as I could and spoke to people who have had their lives touched by the disease. People are grateful we’re bringing awareness to it.”
Pengilly says she’s excited for people to watch the dramatic episodes celebrating its 35th birthday and hinted at quite a few cast members making a return.
“I’m really nervous about what I can say and not giving anything away,” she laughed. “But I was so excited that Scott McGregor, my brother in the show, came back.”
Unfortunately, Pengilly confirmed, there will be no shock appearances from Scott or Charlene.
*Neighbours’ 35th anniversary shows start tomorrow at 6.30pm on 10 Peach with an extra episode each night from 7pm
Originally published as 3 fan favourites killed off in Neighbours as the soap celebrates 35 years