The surprising clause in Gold Logie winner’s TV contract

Veteran Australian actor Georgie Parker has a special clause in her Home and Away contract. Here is why.

Georgie Parker likes to spice things up – that’s why she had a special clause built into her Home and Away contract.

The celebrated Australian actor has played Roo Stewart on TV soap Home and Away for 13 years and will lead the cast in new David Williamson play, The Great Divide, when the production opens next month.

Georgie Parker, who will be in David Williamson's The Great Divide, at the Ensemble Theatre in Milson’s Point. Picture: Tim Hunter.

“I am very lucky,” the two-time Gold Logie winner told The Daily Telegraph.

“I had it written into my contract that if I was able to do a play, they would release me.”

Parker is one of our most recognisable faces of the small screen.

She’s worked on juggernaut shows for nearly four decades, including A Country Practice, All Saints and Play School.

Actor Georgie Parker at the 2001 Logie Awards.

“If you are lucky enough to get a long-running gig like Home and Away, and really that is the only show that is shot like that now, it is such a privilege to get it but at the same time I am used to doing a lot of characters so if you are stuck with the one character all of the time, you can go a bit cuckoo,” Parker, 59, said.

“So it is nice to leave and just stretch your wings in a different environment then go back because you appreciate it all the more for what it gives you and the people there.”

Parker will appear alongside former Country Practice co-star Kate Raison in Williamson’s The Great Divide when it opens at Ensemble Theatre in Kirribilli on March 8.

Fellow Gold Logie winner John Wood is also in the cast with the production to run through until April 27.

Ed Sheeran with Emily Symons, Shane Withington and Georgie Parker on set of Home and Away in 2015.

I think it is kind of dramatic to say he has come out of retirement,” Parker said of Williamson, 81.

“In a way he has, but with people like him, being creative is as normal a function as breathing.”

Parker said she doesn’t see herself ever retiring.

“I would never,” she declared. “If someone will have me, I will be there.”

The Great Divide is directed by Mark Kilmurry and is set in the fictional town of Wallis Heads with the story about “the complexities of human relationships in the face of wealth and ambition”.

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