Jesse Spencer returns to Aussie TV with Neighbours co-star Radha Mitchell for first time in 20 years
Aussie stars Jesse Spencer and Radha Mitchell have reunited on-screen more than 20 years since they starred on Neighbours.
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Jesse Spencer and Radha Mitchell first met when starring on Neighbours back in the 90s, so reuniting on the set of the new Aussie series was somewhat of a full-circle moment for the Aussie stars.
The pair never got to work together directly on the long-running soap at the time, but fast forward more than two decades and they’re co-starring on the new Disney series Last Days of the Space Age – and in an ironic twist, they were actual neighbours during filming.
“We lived right next door to each other,” Spencer, 45, tells news.com.au while promoting the series, which is now streaming on Disney+.
“I don’t think we’d seen each other in 25 years. I knew who she was, that’s for sure,” he adds. “It was like the mid-90s when we met – when we were both young pups. It actually was nice. It was just like we picked up where we left off.”
The pair briefly crossed paths in 1994 when they called Ramsey Street home. Mitchell would leave in 1997 to move to Hollywood, where she has lived ever since after finding success on films such as Pitch Black with Vin Diesel and Man on Fire with Denzel Washington.
Stream Last Days of the Space Age on Disney+, available on Hubbl.
Spencer left Neighbours in 1999 after five years and also relocated to Hollywood where he worked continuously on acclaimed series’ House and Chicago Fire. So starring on Last Days of the Space Age together is like a homecoming for the pair.
“We’d both been living in the US and coming back to actually be neighbours for a week while we were shooting, it was very strange,” 50-year-old Mitchell tells us.
“I think we understood each other very well without having spoken to each other for 20 years.”
The series marks Spencer’s return to Aussie TV in more than 20 years. A return to work on a project he was passionate about was always front of mind – he just couldn’t find one that fit into his gruelling TV schedule.
“I ended up in network TV in the US for 18 years straight, and I was constantly looking to come back and do something,” he says. “But for anyone who knows anything about network TV, the schedule is pretty intense.”
He is preaching to the choir because Mitchell knows all too well what starring on a US TV show entails: “It’s like a life sentence,” she says. “Imagine, 16 hour days…”
Spencer says he can’t complain. He had “great jobs” and “a lot of stability”, but when he left Chicago Fire in 2021 after marrying neuroscientist Dr. Kali Woodruff Carr and welcoming their first baby in 2022, he found he may just have some extra time on his hands.
“I was like, ‘Well, maybe now I can find something.’ And then Last Days of the Space Age came up within six months and I was like, ‘Perfect,’” he says. “I’m very, very happy to come back and finally be able to shoot something in Australia.”
Set in Perth but filmed in various locations across WA, and in Sydney and Wollongong in NSW, the eight-part series follows three families in a tight-knit coastal community.
The year is 1979 and at the time Western Australia was buzzing as hosts of the Miss Universe pageant, while preparing for the impending crash-landing of the US space station, Skylab – both events actually happened in real life.
The local power plant workers are also on strike and the threat of a power outage is very real. Spencer and Mitchell play husband and wife Tony and Judy Bissett, who both work at the power plant and experience a power shift in their household when Judy becomes Tony’s boss and she makes him redundant.
Marriage, friendships and futures are tested amid the chaos as families try to navigate this period of huge social change for worker’s rights, feminism, homophobia and racism.
“You have families from all different walks of life who have their trials and tribulations, and we give time and space to really flesh out these characters and their challenges and their transformations,” Spencer says of the series, which also stars Deborah Mailman, Vince Colosimo and Game of Thrones star Iain Glenn. “It’s universal, those themes, and I think a lot of people can relate.”
Adds Mitchell: “It’s certainly very wacky, but there’s also something very sincere about it. The story certainly speaks to Australian history and allows us to reflect on Australian history, how we’ve been telling ourselves about the history and where it’s led us to now. So that was kind of what was conceptually really interesting about it.”
“And then the characters are all really charming and the situations are all very relatable. I felt it was very emotionally potent.”
After living and working in the US for decades, being back on an Aussie production was refreshing for the pair.
“It’s bit more relaxed. I love that about the Australian perspective in general,” Mitchell says. “It’s very realistic. They don’t have inflated ideas about things. And it’s little less neurotic, maybe.”
“That trope of Aussies are more laid-back, I forget it all the time. And I come back and it just washes over me again,” Spencer adds. “There’s sort of a real sense of laid-backness. You always forget until you come back and then I can see it through a foreigner’s eyes.
“It’s nice. You feel like you have time to breathe in it and to actually live in it. And so that’s a great way to work on a series and explore the character and the dynamics between.”
All episodes of Last Days of the Space Age are now streaming on Disney+
Originally published as Jesse Spencer returns to Aussie TV with Neighbours co-star Radha Mitchell for first time in 20 years
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