Was this The Bold and the Beautiful’s weirdest plot?
ASHLEIGH Brewer landed a role on the famous US daytime soap speaking with her natural Aussie accent — until its producers made a bizarre change.
Stellar
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ASHLEIGH Brewer is ready to be the villain. Or at least to play one on-screen.
“I always get cast as the nice girl next door,” the 27-year-old tells Stellar.
“Villains are so fun! I have an HBO film coming out next month [My Dinner With Hervé] and I play a hideous, gold-digging actress who marries Peter Dinklage’s character. I thought, ‘I could play a villain for a really long time…’”
It could well be the start of a whole new trajectory for Brewer.
The Brisbane-raised actor relocated to LA at 21, but the one-time Neighbours star is back in Australia for her latest job.
And next week, she rounds out starring roles in a trifecta of long-running soaps when she debuts on the Seven Network’s Home And Away. “I was lucky to grab a job just at the right time — when I really wanted to come back and have another little boost of Australia.”
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And it’s one she particularly needs now, given Brewer wrapped a four-year run as Ivy Forrester on iconic US daytime soap The Bold And The Beautiful in January.
On a show that has seen numerous characters miraculously resurrected from the dead, it is telling that a storyline involving Ivy’s accent, which started out Australian, switched midway to American, and landed back on Australian again, will go down as one of its more audacious plot points.
“The way it was written was that, in order to fit in with the Forrester brand, Ivy needed to be a little more uniform, ‘We’re American, the company is American — so do the accent,’” Brewer explains.
“But then they decided to take the show to Sydney [last year] and I said to them, ‘Guys, I can’t go back to Australia with this [American] accent,’ and they were like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s fine.’ So when I flew back to Australia, Ivy was Australian again.”
She laughs the whole incident off.
“It can only happen on that show! Look, I wasn’t totally privy to the decision why it was written [that way], but it could have been as simple as I wasn’t fitting into the furniture anymore. Maybe the whole accent novelty wore off.”
Her experience on a US set has fortified her work ethic.
“Americans are machines the way they work,” she says.
“I remember when I first started and was like, ‘Wait, when is lunch?’ And it’s, ‘No, that’s up to you to figure out lunch.’”
Upon reflection, Brewer says she “learnt some hard lessons very early on and I know they’ll stick with me until I’m retired”.
For now, she’s relishing the relatively slower pace of Home And Away.
“Seven scenes might take six hours. I would have finished, on Bold, my seven scenes in an hour and a half. It moves that fast. It’s all studio and there are no weather variables. The hours are longer here, but the workload there was more intense.”
Brewer moved to Melbourne when she was 17 to join the cast of the nation’s other major soap, Neighbours; her Home And Away gig marks the first time she has spent a long stretch in Sydney.
“I love it,” she says.
“I could set up here.”
That’s not going to happen just yet; she’s determined to head back to LA and continue building her career.
“My house and my boyfriend and my dog, they’re all there. So I’ve got to eventually get back.”
She has credited good friend and fellow Neighbours alumnus Margot Robbie with encouraging her to spread her wings beyond the realm of daytime soaps, but in the meantime Brewer is home for a far more important reason than another pay cheque.
“It doesn’t matter where you’re from, getting home is so important. I wanted to be closer to my family for a little length of time,” she says.
“And to recharge my batteries. Then I’ll get back [to LA], ready to go again.”
Ashleigh Brewer will appear in Home And Away from 7pm Monday, September 17.