‘A real level up’: The confronting encounter that gave Lynne McGranger an insight about on-screen survival

Lynne McGranger – Home and Away stalwart, TV mum to countless kids and after-school babysitter to countless more – is ready to splash out. “I can’t believe I’m having champagne and oysters on The Sydney Morning Herald,” she says, absolutely tickled.

We’re at the Deckhouse in Woolwich, on Sydney’s lower north shore. The Harbour Bridge is in view, the cafe is packed and McGranger, 72, who plays Irene Roberts, unfailingly calls everyone “Darling” (“You can just put it there, darling.” “Thanks darl.” “Can we get you anything, darl?”)

Lynne McGranger at the Deckhouse in Woolwich. McGranger, whjo plays Irene Roberts in Home and Away, is leaving the soap after 33 years. Credit: James Brickwood

We’re here because McGranger is leaving Summer Bay after 33 years. After Ray Meagher, who plays Alf “Flamin’ crows” Stewart, she is the second-longest serving actor on Home and Away, an achievement that’s as rare as long-running soaps themselves. Over those years, McGranger has been a woman’s magazine stalwart – “Last week they said I was getting married and was going to be a grandmother” – and fan favourite (there’s an Instagram post dedicated to her “Irenisms”), but she firmly eschews any talk of celebrity. “That’s a bullshit word.”

She picked the Deckhouse because it’s halfway between the office – Seven’s studios in Eveleigh – and Palm Beach, where Home and Away’s exteriors are shot. McGranger lives in the Hills District, in Sydney’s north-west. For the past few weeks, she’s been clocking up 14-hour days, which start with a 5.15am pick-up, then make-up from 6.10am, on set from 7.30am and then home by 8pm. This morning, she’s been filming at Palm Beach, and it’s there she will return after lunch.

The rock oysters with chardonnay and white pepper mignonette from the Deckhouse at Woolwich. Credit:

“Let’s order first and then we can talk and then eat,” she decides. “I’ve been thinking about oysters all week.”

First, of course, is the champagne – a glass of Piper-Heidsieck each (which the restaurant doesn’t charge us for). Then McGranger chooses some plates to share: rock oysters with chardonnay and white pepper mignonette, halloumi saganaki with wild honey, grilled prawns, calamari, Greek salad, pita bread, hummus and taramasalata. It’s a lot and when it’s delivered, it barely fits on the table.

At the time of our lunch, McGranger’s final scene is two weeks away – she wrapped on March 26 – but McGranger has no feeling of loss. Leaving is something she wanted to do, and she was even able to choose the manner of Irene’s departure.

The grilled prawns with oregano and lemon at the Deckhouse at Woolwich. Credit: James Brickwood

“I’m feeling relieved because the storyline that I’m acting out is fabulous,” she says. “I’m so pleased with it and proud of it, but it’s full-on, and I’m kind of exhausted. So, having said that, at no point have I regretted my decision. It just felt like the time was right.

“When I was touring [Wendy Harmer’s musical comedy] The Grandparents Club last year, I just thought, ‘You know what? I want to keep doing this.’ Thirty-three years in the one gig is great, and I feel so blessed and it’s very impressive, but I just feel like, while I’ve still got my capabilities and everything, I really want to do something else. Go back to doing what I love most [theatre] and what I started with, basically.”

Lynne McGranger helps tennis star Lleyton Hewitt, who was then engaged to Bec Cartwright, learn his lines for a guest appearance on Home and Away in 2005. Credit:

McGranger came into acting late. She went straight from Blakehurst High School to teacher’s college in Wagga Wagga, where she did theatre, cabaret and comedy on the side. After a couple of years teaching in Sydney’s south (“Everything was going along swimmingly, and then they brought children into the room”), she tossed it in for a life of performing.

She tried stand-up in Melbourne while pregnant with her daughter Clancy (“I thought no one would throw anything at me. I was wrong”) and hung out with the trailblazing female stand-ups of the ’80s: Harmer, Jean Kittson, Denise Scott and Lynda Gibson.

Was she any good?

Irene (Lynne McGranger) being terrorised by Eve Smith in Home and Away in 2000.Credit:

“It was very brutal,” she says. “I had good days and bad days. Some days I was the funniest human on the planet, and other days I wanted to stick forks in my eyes, but you knew somewhere in the middle lay the truth. But as a woman, then, it was very brutal. The drunks in the audience …”

When Home and Away came calling, McGranger was 39. She took over the role of Irene from Jacquy Phillips, who left in 1992. It was only supposed to be a temporary gig, but McGranger proved so popular that she was permanently written into the show.

“When Irene falls off the wagon, she’s a mean drunk, and it’s so much fun to play,” McGranger says. “But Irene’s not mean, she calls the spade a front-end loader, but she’s not a mean person. She’s a good person, but when she gets the grog in her, she’s a mean drunk and she gets violent.”

Over 33 years, McGranger has tangled with every soap cliché imaginable: alcoholism, breast cancer, rehab, prison (she was innocent), a murdered ex-husband, a former boyfriend who was a double murderer, a surrogate mum for her daughter Finlay (the baby was kidnapped by a cult, but found), a son, Nathan, in prison (now released, but not before organising the murder of his father) and another son, Damian, who is now possibly a priest in New Zealand but hasn’t been seen for some time.

Irene (Lynne McGranger) punches Angie (Laurie Foell) when she discovers what she has been doing to Nick (Chris Egan).Credit:

Her favourite storyline?

“The one that springs to mind, and I say favourite because it was a challenge and because it meant something personal to me, was when Irene was diagnosed with breast cancer,” she says. “So, my best friend that lives in York, in the UK, her daughter was diagnosed with breast cancer at 49. It just so happened that Irene was going through with the same thing. So what they decided to do, I told them about Nikki, and they decided Irene would mirror what was going on in Nikki’s life.

“So Nikki also had to stop taking her first lot of chemo because it was affecting her heart. So that’s what they did with Irene, and it was brutal. They didn’t hold back on that. I had the wig, I did everything but shave my head – I would have, except I would look like a turtle.

“Sadly, Nikki didn’t make it, Irene did, but it meant something. It was an important storyline, and it paid homage to Nikki and to Maureen, my friend.”

Her other favourite is a screaming match between Irene and Leah (Ada Nicodemou) on the Summer Bay pier. “I said, ‘No wonder your ex-husband left you’ – because Leah’s [character] has been married about 35 times, we call her the Black Widow – but it was full on.”

McGranger can cry on command – “I’m an ugly crier, my face looks like a dropped pie” – and has been told by the odd director or two to tone it down. “I’m always getting told, ‘smaller and quieter’. Well, I don’t do that. Sorry. I do big and loud.”

McGranger has no regrets about leaving Home and Away afteer 33 years . “I am ready to go,” she says. Credit: James Brickwood

She also doesn’t take for granted how much a part of people’s lives she has become. “It’s quite an institution, I’ve realised”. So much so, she was once bailed up at Leeds airport in Britain by a man who asked the usual question: “You’re on Home and Away, aren’t you?”

“And I went, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ And he says, ‘You play that Irene, don’t you?’ And I was ready to go, ‘All right, you can have a selfie’. And he goes, ‘That is the most annoying character I have ever seen in my life!’ And then I went, ‘OK, have a good day, good chat.’

“But it was a real level up because I thought: Well, he knows who I am. And sometimes that’s as important – that you have the characters in those things that just drive you crazy. You want to see them get their comeuppance or morph into a better person.

“So being annoying or being a baddie can be just as important as being a goodie and being an anchor in the town. It’s when people don’t care about you that you probably won’t have your job for very long.”

McGranger credits her longevity on the show to the cast and crew “feeling like family”.

“It’s a bit like the Sydney Swans: dickheads don’t last very long,” she says.

“I think that’s become very much the case on a show like Home and Away; you can’t afford to have someone who’s precious, or who’s a prima donna, someone who thinks they rule the roost. We’re all rowing the same boat.”

 Home and Away producer Lucy Addario, Lynne McGranger and Ada Nicodemou on the set for McGranger’s last day on March 26.Credit: Jeremy Greive

That down-to-earth attitude is what has endeared Home and Away to its legions of fans. It’s a completely no-frills production that sells itself on the Australian dream of sunshine and sand. It’s also still a decent money spinner for Seven – a 2022 report commissioned by the network said it generated $1 billion in export revenue – and looks to be in no danger of being axed like its poor old rival Neighbours.

Unlike Neighbours, which boasts a multi-racial cast, a queer couple and a transgender character, Home and Away has remained, in the main, white and straight. Is that lack of diversity something the cast ever talk about?

“Certainly among the actors,” she says. “We’ve done a gay female storyline, two, in fact, I think, and it hasn’t been met with – and this probably speaks to the audience – that [storyline] hasn’t been met with a huge response. We’ve never had a male gay storyline ... So we have gone down that path, but they really seem to steer away because of the audience, which is weird.”

The receipt for lunch with Lynne McGranger at the Deckhouse at Woolwich.Credit:

Home and Away has been good to McGranger. It’s given her a comfortable life – from the beginning she was paid enough to allow her partner, Paul, to quit work and take care of Clancy – but she’s also “not driving a $100,000 car or flitting off to Iceland every so often for six weeks”.

What she will do, though, once she’s read her final lines, is set off on Tasmania’s Three Capes Walk with a couple of girlfriends and watch as many Sydney Swans games as possible (“They’ve just got to get over that flipping grand final hiccup”). After that, she will probably have a watch party for her final episode, which will air in the middle of the year. All in all, she seems unsentimental about the end of an Australian television era.

“I am ready to go and that’s the difference between the way I feel now and the way I felt maybe two years ago,” she says. “Obviously, the time wasn’t right then, and now it is, but you know, come and talk to me in a month!”

Home and Away airs Monday to Thursday on Seven and 7Plus.

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