Move over, Summer Bay. There are some Aotearora beachside beauty spots that might just be contesting for the affections of Home and Away star Maddison Brown (The Kettering Incident).
“I love New Zealand,” says Brown, reeling off her favourite places and namechecking some of our own famous bays, including the Bay of Islands and the Bay of Plenty.
“I’m doing Christmas actually in New Zealand this year, Meri Kirihimete!”
Brown, who plays cardiac nurse Jo Langham on Home and Away, has spent a good deal of time in Aotearoa with her fiance, Kiwi actor Simon Mead (The Gone). She says she and Mead also “absolutely love Queenstown”, where Mead was based while filming Under The Vines.
Palm Beach in Sydney, where Home and Away is filmed, has its own charms too, of course.
Actor Maddison Brown says she’s “having truly the best time” starring on Home and Away. “Everyone in the cast is such a joy to work with.”Jeremy Greive
“I was just shooting at the beach today. Such a beautiful day, a beautiful pod of dolphins went by in the water. I just love being up at Palm Beach. Every time I’m like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe this is our office’.”
As an actor, Brown has worked extensively overseas. In 2015, she starred in Strangerland with Nicole Kidman and she spent 11 years in the United States working on projects, including the Dynasty reboot. But she’s ecstatic to be back home, working on the long-running soap.
“It doesn’t get more iconic than Home and Away. Every time I see Ray Meagher (who has played Alf Stewart for 37 years) at work, I think ‘I can’t believe this is my life’. I grew up watching this show, it all feels so surreal still. I’ll never get used to it.
“I’m having truly the best time. Everyone in the cast is such a joy to work with.
“It just means the world to me that I can be in Sydney and be working and that I get to do it with such incredible people.”
While Brown is having a thoroughly fabulous time behind the scenes, on-screen, her character Jo has been going through a difficult period. Before coming to Summer Bay, Jo’s mother Kristina was killed in a car accident while Jo was behind the wheel. Jo’s memories of what happened that day are hazy and the incident has fractured the family, with her sister Lacey (Sophea Pennington) placing the blame for their mother’s death squarely with Jo. The girls’ dad David (Jeremy Lindsay Taylor, The Last Anniversary) followed Lacey to the Bay in an attempt to repair the family unit, but the sisters have struggled to reconcile.
Their story may be turning a corner though, with Jo undergoing hypnotherapy to try to unlock what happened, find some closure – and perhaps even uncover another figure involved in the case.
“I think Jo’s desire to heal and Jo’s desire to come together as a family is really what drives her to choose to look into hypnosis and try to see if she can remember what happened. I think she’s just so determined to bring the family back together and have Lacey back in her life.”
Off-screen, Brown says the trio have really bonded.
“We all really click, we all get along. We have great chemistry and Jeremy is just the best.
“He feels like a real father figure for Sophea and I, and we just love him. I love my little Langham family. Honestly, we couldn’t have gotten more lucky with each other.”
Brown, who has two sisters of her own, says she also shares a “sisterly dynamic” with Pennington.
“We have so much fun together,” she says. Brown is also enjoying the long-awaited thawing of the frosty tension between their characters.
“I really love seeing Jo and Lacey become closer. Obviously, they’ve had some tough things to work through, but it’s really sweet watching them become more friendly to each other.”
Home and Away, TVNZ 2, weeknights
