Neighbours returns! Stars including Alan Fletcher and Mischa Barton reveal all about the shocks in store – and the not-so-final farewell
Well, it turns out everybody needs good Neighbours after all – the long-running soap is back just over a year after what we thought was the final farewell to Ramsay Street.
Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan, Guy Pearce – even Margot Robbie on Zoom! – were among the famous former stars who returned to Erinsborough to say goodbye after the Australian soap was axed by British broadcaster Channel 5, after 37 years on screen, in 2022.
But, almost as if Bouncer had conjured it up in a dream, earlier this year it was announced that streamer Amazon Freevee would be bringing Neighbours back. The first episode airs on Monday, with some familiar faces – Hi Dr Karl and Susan! – as well as a mysterious new arrival played by Mischa Barton, star of glamorous noughties US teen drama The OC.
As we enter the era of Neighbours 2.0, Sky News spoke to some of the stars about the big return.
Alan Fletcher (Dr Karl Kennedy): ‘I was nervous coming back’
Everywhere you go in the UK, people just want to talk Neighbours, talk excitement levels about Neighbours coming back. It’s quite a phenomenon. In the script there’s been a two-year break, so the writing team have very cleverly been able to craft a story that teases out what happens in those two years.
I was quite nervous going back because, you know, Neighbours was kind of like wearing old clothes for most of us – a very familiar work environment, you go to work, you know everybody, it was very relaxed and we had a great time making our TV show. Coming back, the stakes are suddenly way up here because the show has been saved and we really needed to pay homage to that.
There’s some delicious comedy to come. We’ve got wonderful returnees like Harold coming in to be a guest character. We’ve got these fabulous new characters as well. So there’s a lot going on… and it has been revealed that there’s something going on with [Karl’s wife] Susan, some sort of secret she’s holding on to. And that plays out really interestingly. It’s a bit of a shock to Karl.
Mischa Barton (Reece Sinclair): ‘I was grateful to Neighbours veterans’
Neighbours was surprisingly different to other shows I’ve worked on. All of these sets function very differently. This one, it was wild. I have a lot of respect for them; it’s multi-camera and they work so fast and the amount of content that they shoot, like five episodes in a week and probably 20 scenes a day, and they don’t get multiple takes. I was really grateful to veterans like Stefan [Dennis, who plays Paul Robinson] to take me under his wing and show me how it functions, because it’s a well-oiled machine.
Reece Sinclair, I just really like her as a character. I thought she was something that I would enjoy playing and was kind of written with me in mind. And the writers were very open to trying to Americanise it a little bit and make sure she was like, you know, appropriately outsider but also had her place in this world… Reece will definitely find a way to irritate Paul, which is good. She’s very mysterious. You don’t really know why she’s there at first and then it turns out there is a lot more to her being there than originally meets the eye. So it’s not quite straightforward.
I’ve done my piece, but I mean, it’s left so that the character can come back. In true Neighbours style, there’s always the option there and anything can really happen with. She leaves things behind in Australia so it’s definitely a possibility. It’s not wrapped up.
Georgie Stone (Mackenzie Hargreaves): ‘Neighbours allowed a trans character to exist as a person’
I remember vividly saying goodbye to everyone, goodbye to the show and goodbye to the building, which was like our home through COVID. And that was really emotional. So to be back in that building with some familiar faces and with some new people as well was so cool. It’s like the ultimate bonus round – we thought we were done and now we’re back again. I think we all just feel really lucky and grateful because we know what the world is like without Neighbours and without it in our lives. So we’re just holding on to that feeling.
Neighbours was an incredible opportunity for me to tell a story that was very close to my heart, you know, aligned with my own experience, with Mackenzie being a trans woman. I’m a trans woman and Neighbours was an incredible opportunity to tell a story that isn’t told often on screen. And when it is told, it’s kind of riddled with stereotypes and tropes that aren’t helpful. Working with the writers on the show to make sure Mackenzie’s experience was honest and respectful just made it such a fun and rewarding experience. And then we were able to go beyond that and have Mackenzie exist outside her gender identity and just be, in Erinsborough and part of the drama like everyone else.
I think that’s radical in and of itself, to allow a trans character just to exist as a person, because so often we’re reduced to that one aspect of our experience. Neighbours will always mean a lot to me because of that and in whatever projects in the future I do, Neighbours will always be that one that changed everything for me, and offered to other shows an example, a way to tell the story in a way that’s really helpful and respectful. I think Neighbours has paved the way.
Stefan Dennis (Paul Robinson): ‘It was one of the saddest things I ever heard’
Nostalgically I’m going to say the ’80s is my favourite era of Neighbours, but in absolute honesty it’s now. Right now. Seriously… let’s be honest about this, we’re still making a soap – we’re not making Shakespeare, we’re making a soap, but we’re making a damn good soap. I’m privileged to be working on one of the greatest soaps on the planet, which is really, really well filmed and well written. So now is my favourite era. But nostalgically, the ’80s, obviously, is when it all began and was a huge phenomenon, particularly in the UK.
The thing about the show ending was, it could have been so easy to just sort of drop the ball in the last couple of weeks and go, ‘Ah, yeah, what’s the point?’ Not put our heart into it. But we did the opposite. One of the most emotional things that I’ve ever heard in my life was Adam Noel, one of our first assistant directors, when he was doing that last scene. And he said: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, that’s a wrap.’ It was one of the saddest things I ever heard.
The way that the world watches television now has evolved greatly. My philosophy was if Neighbours, or any soap, does not get picked up by a mainstream streaming channel, it’ll be the slow demise of soaps around the world, because people are watching free-to-air television for sports news, current affairs and reality television – everything else, they go to streaming. So I was ecstatic that Amazon got behind it.
Rebekah Elmaloglou (Terese Willis): ‘I sold my house’
It was devastating when Neighbours ended… I think in the last six months it was just more about getting to the end and getting the job done and trying to be positive and look ahead, beyond the end of the show, to what was going to be next for all of us in our own personal lives.
As far as the cast and crew go, we were all just trying to get the job done as professionally as we could, but also knowing that, you know, we were all going to be unemployed. I sold my house. We wanted to move up to New South Wales anyway. But then, yeah, then the show got picked up again and it was like, ‘Okay, we’re moving back to Melbourne’. And we got the dogs and the cat and the kid and… got back in the car and drove back down. But it was fantastic. I didn’t think twice about coming back.”
Tim Kano (Leo Tanaka): ‘It starts off with a real bang’
It was definitely a big grieving process when Neighbours ended and a lot of cast and crew sold their houses and moved away to different parts of Australia or wherever they originally lived. Then of course when we got the call that it was coming back, we were just overwhelmed with emotion.
They’ve brought it back in such a great way, it’s really smart. There’s enough of a time gap for a bit of evolution for the characters, but also to bring in awesome new characters as well… I think Mischa’s character Reece brings a really interesting kind of twisty plotline. And I think it starts off with a real bang that has a kind of domino effect in terms of every character gets affected by what happens, even in the first episode. So it’s exciting to see what comes around and also how the fans are going to react to the shock as well.
A drill rapper turned TikTok wildlife presenter hopes to “bridge the gap” between young people and climate change.
Growing up in Ladbroke Grove, west London, former music star TY was stabbed four times. He had fallen “into nonsense”, he says, but he always wanted something different for his life.
Wildlife and the environment are his real passions. Nowadays, you are more likely to see TY with a boa constrictor clamping on to his arm in the Amazon, or letting a tarantula crawl across his hands.
He tells Sky News he wants to help people “understand the severity of the planet right now”, but the route to his new calling hasn’t exactly been a straightforward path.
“I never had purpose,” the rapper explains. “Three or four years ago, I would not have seen myself in this light… As I fell into wildlife, I found myself again.”
Sky News’ Katie Spencer braves holding a snake
Collaborations with US wildlife enthusiast Garrett Galvin – aka fishingarrett, one of the biggest wildlife content creators in the world – have certainly helped when it comes to amassing a growing following on social media as TYfromtheWyld.
But TY already had a substantial number of fans from his days as a platinum-selling drill rapper, having found fame as a member of the pioneering rap collective CGM (formerly known as 1011).
Alongside rapper Digga D, he made headlines when police caught the pair and three others in possession of machetes and baseball bats in 2017.
They ended up being given one of the UK’s very first music criminal behaviour orders, with the police arguing their songs incited violence – a move which triggered a debate about art censorship.
‘I never saw anyone that looked and thought like me’
“It’s a rough area, Ladbroke Grove, where I’m from,” says TY. “Crime started happening, I started getting into nonsense on the roads and as a young kid growing up you can get easily influenced by some stuff, so I kind of was lost for a while.
“Music was never my passion, I just fell into it. I grew up watching [TV naturalists and conservationists] Steve Backshall, Steve Irwin, but that world was so distant for me. I never saw anyone that looked and thought like me.
“Now I want to represent and be an inspiration for young people.”
Pic: @tyfromthewyld
Rapper AJ Tracey, who grew up in the same area of London as TY, says people need to understand that it’s all too easy to drift down the wrong path.
“What a lot of people don’t realise is that people aren’t choosing to be in the situation that they are… anyone who wants to change their life and do something positive 100% deserves a second chance, honestly, probably even a third or fourth chance, because we’re all humans and we make mistakes.”
Just don’t expect Tracey to be making an appearance in any of TY’s videos anytime soon.
“He’s with some dangerous animals,” he laughs. “I don’t know about that, I’m scared!”
Pic: @tyfromthewyld
On a more serious note, Tracey says successive British governments could learn from TY’s skills at engaging with young people.
“I feel like when the country’s making budget cuts, it’s the youth that miss out all the time… the people in power have got to really pull some things together.”
While there might not seem an obvious crossover between drill music and learning about the ecosystem, TY’s success clearly demonstrates that an audience is there.
“We’re not doing enough to help,” he says. “This is my mission, to save animals, save the world, and get as many people on board as I can.
“Maybe a guy like me, from a certain background, will just kick a lot of people up to just say, ‘Yo. He’s doing something’.”
Entertainment
Gene Hackman’s wife died from rare infectious disease around a week before actor’s death, medical investigator says
Gene Hackman’s wife died from a rare infectious disease around a week before the actor died, medical investigators have said.
The couple were found dead in their New Mexico home on 26 February, along with one of their pet dogs. Police have previously said there were no apparent signs of foul play.
At a press conference on Friday, chief medical investigator for New Mexico, doctor Heather Jarrell, gave an update on the results of post-mortem investigations carried out following their deaths.
Doctor Jarrell said Hackman’s wife, Betsy Arakawa, died from hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, a rare infectious disease. There were no signs of trauma and the death was a result of natural causes, she said.
Actor Gene Hackman with his wife, Betsy Arakawa, pictured in 2003. Pic: AP
The doctor said Arakawa likely died on 11 February, the date she was last known to have communicated with people via email.
She said Hackman had advanced Alzheimer’s and died from heart disease, with data from his pacemaker last registering on 18 February.
Due to his Alzheimer’s, “it’s quite possible he was not aware that [his wife] was deceased,” Dr Jarrell added.
The actor tested negative for hantavirus, a rare disease spread by infected rodent droppings.
Gene Hackman in 1999. Pic: AP
Humans can contract hantavirus by breathing in contaminated air, and symptoms can start as soon as one week, or as long as eight weeks, later. It is not transmissible from person to person.
There were just seven confirmed cases of hantavirus in New Mexico last year, and Arakawa is the only person confirmed to have contracted it in the state in 2025. Between 1975 and 2023, New Mexico recorded a total of 129 hantavirus cases, with 52 deaths.
Santa Fe County sheriff Adan Mendoza said authorities are still waiting for data from mobile phones found at the property, but it is “very unlikely they are going to show anything else”.
“There’s no indication” that Hackman used a mobile phone or any other technology to communicate and the couple lived a very private life before their deaths, he added.
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Bill Murray’s tribute to Gene Hackman
The cause of the couple’s dog’s death has not been confirmed but it is now known that Arakawa had picked the animal up from the vet, where it had undergone a procedure, on 9 February.
The procedure “may explain why [the dog] was in a crate at the residence” while two surviving dogs were found roaming the property, Mr Mendoza said.
Hackman, who was widely respected as one of the greatest actors of his generation, was a five-time Oscar nominee who won the best actor in a leading role for The French Connection in 1972 and best actor in a supporting role for Unforgiven two decades later.
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Morgan Freeman paying tribute to Gene Hackman at the Oscars. Pic: AP/Chris Pizzello
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He met Arakawa, a concert pianist, in the mid-1980s and the pair married in 1991.
Brian James, founding member of The Damned, has died aged 70.
The guitarist, who was part of the group’s original line-up, wrote the first UK punk single New Rose and helped the band create their debut album, 1977’s Damned Damned Damned.
A spokesperson for record label Easy Action said: “I can confirm that Brian passed away peacefully yesterday with his family present.”
The Damned in 1978. Pic: Sheila Rock/Shutterstock
James’ fellow band member, bassist Raymond “Captain Sensible” Burns, said in an Instagram post: “The riffmeister, Brian has gone – that final act that happens to us all, for most is a sad and miserable affair but while it’s truly awful our mate has been taken I prefer to celebrate the life… and what a life Brian James had.”
He added: “And looking back I have to say what an absolute gent Brian was… despite having to occasionally endure some pretty appalling behaviour by yours truly he never once lost it with me – and whenever we met over the following decades we would have a drink and a bloody good laugh.”
A statement on James’ Facebook page said he was “one of the true pioneers of music, guitarist, songwriter, and true gentleman” and a musician who was “incessantly creative and a musical tour de force” over his long career.
It said: “With his wife Minna, son Charlie, and daughter-in-law Alicia by his side, Brian passed peacefully on Thursday 6 March 2025.”
The Damned supported the Sex Pistols on their Anarchy Tour of the UK and went on to play with T Rex on Marc Bolan’s final tour before he died.
James left the band after it released its second album, Music For Pleasure, and was part of the short-lived Tanz Der Youth before he formed The Lords Of The New Church with American singer Stiv Bators and drummer Nick Turner.
The band released the songs Open Your Eyes, Dance With Me and Method To My Madness.
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James went on to work with The Dripping Lips, create his own band the Brian James Gang, and release solo albums.
In 2020 he and The Damned lead singer Dave Vanian, drummer Christopher “Rat Scabies” Millar and Burns announced the band would reform more than four decades after it began in 1976.
James performed with the group in 2022.
Burns said: “When BJ, Rat, DV and myself got back together for The Damned originals shows it was magical in all sorts of ways… that we were chums again of course but also the way we managed to recreate our ’76 garage punk sound right from the first chord in rehearsals.
“We were all up for doing it again too… but that’ll never happen now, sadly.”
The band’s set in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Friday would be dedicated to James, he added, “without whom The Damned would never ever have happened”.
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