US singer Harry Connick Jr’s daughter Kate Connick is joining Neighbours: ‘My family is going to be doing viewing parties’
Following Mischa Barton and Chrishell Stause, Neighbours has signed another US actor in its rebooted series – and she has a very famous father.
Stellar
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It’s not the “neighbours” on Ramsay Street that Kate Connick is dressing to impress: it’s the trendy Melburnians.
The rising US actor – also known as “Skate” (from her birth name, Sara Kate) – has settled in the inner-city suburb of Collingwood while filming a guest role on Neighbours.
“I feel like I’m definitely living in the ‘cool’ area, so I got a second piercing just to try to fit in,” Connick, 27, tells Stellar with a laugh.
“Collingwood reminds me of Brooklyn a bit.”
While Australia feels very distant from Connecticut – the US state where she grew up – family is never far away. Connick’s younger sister Charlotte, 22, is training at Melbourne’s 16th Street Actors Studio, while her elder sibling Georgia, 28, is studying cinematography at the Australian Film Television and Radio School in Sydney.
The sisters fell in love with the Aussie lifestyle when their father, singer Harry Connick Jr, was a judge on Australian Idol last year.
“I love nature,” explains Connick.
“I’ve spent a lot of time in Byron Bay, too – I love it there. I just honestly feel like this is home now, at this point.
“So yeah, my sisters and I have decided to stay, and we’re really happy.”
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While Connick might have become well-acquainted with many aspects of Australian culture, she had never seen a single episode of Neighbours before landing her role as Fallon Morrell.
Now a fan of the show, Connick is looking forward to introducing her American friends and family to the Aussie soap.
“My family is going to be doing viewing parties,” she says of making her Neighbours debut in the new year.
Having returned home to New Orleans following Idol, Connick Jr – who will return to our screens next year in the local version of reality series The Piano – regularly visits his daughters with his wife Jill Goodacre and will be in Australia for Christmas.
Connick says that while she’s hosting at her new apartment, she plans to leave the holiday season catering to her parents, who are “great cooks”.
Coming from a close-knit clan, Connick has always looked to her parents for inspiration and support in her career.
She sang with her dad on his 2008 rendition of ‘Winter Wonderland’ and “on a few TV shows”.
Listen to the latest episode of the Stellar podcast, Something To Talk About, below:
And, like Goodacre (a well-known Victoria’s Secret Angel in the 1980s), Connick has had her own success as a model, fronting campaigns for Reebok and Bobbi Brown.
“I really look up to both my parents, and I’ve always wanted to be like them in different ways,” she tells Stellar.
“They wanted me to do my own thing, and were always accepting of whatever it was that I was interested in.”
Neighbours airs Monday to Thursday at 4pm on Network 10 and 10 Play, and at 6.30pm on 10 Peach.
See the full shoot with Kate Connick in the new issue out Stellar, out via The Sunday Telegraph (NSW), Sunday Herald Sun (VIC), The Sunday Mail (QLD) and Sunday Mail (SA).
For more from Stellar and the podcast, Something To Talk About, click here.
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