Stefan Dennis was “shocked and confused” when ‘Neighbours’ was cancelled.
Stefan Dennis on returning to Neighbours
The 64-year-old actor starred as bad boy Paul Robinson on the Aussie soap opera from its inception in 1985 until 1993 and again from 2004 but admitted that he was left reeling when UK broadcaster Channel 5 decided to end its funding deal in 2022 and the programme was therefore then brought to a swift halt.
Speaking to BANG Showbiz and other media outlets, he said: “It was shocking, though. It was confusing and shocking when we first found out [about the cancellation] because it was like ‘What?!’. How can this happen? Get your up jaw the floor!”
However, just months after the series finale aired with a host of guest stars from the show’s history including the likes of Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan and Guy Pearce, it was confirmed that the show would be revived by Amazon Freevee in late 2023 and Stefan went on admit that he had to “think about” accepting a return offer for a while before realising that he would be a “nut bag” to turn it down.
He said: “Being honest, I did think about it for a while. When I say a while, hours, not days. You've got to remember it's nearly eight months since we'd stopped working on the show. We had moved on. We're actors, we move on. We look for other work. Some of us had moved and all of that.
"But because of the confusion and the shock of the announcement, the immediate announcement, I did I kind of went ‘Oh, do I want to go? Or do I want to keep pursuing other work and sort of go into semi-retirement so to speak?’ And then yeah, it didn't, it didn't take long to realise that hang on a second, this is a pretty darn good game. I would be a nut bag to say no to it!”
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