Last week I made my network television “acting” debut on the iconic Australian soap opera “Neighbours”.
It was a fun, if not surreal experience, even if it was just a background extra in the coffee shop, which to my surprise was renamed “Harold’s Store”. Apparently this happened some years ago, long after I stopped watching semi-regularly.
On March 23 I drove out to the studios in Melbourne’s fabulous eastern suburb of Nunawading to join the ranks of famous Australian personalities such as Kylie Minogue, Guy Pierce, Russell Crowe, and that lanky Irish guy who’s name I don’t know, who all started with minor roles and bit parts on Neighbours.
I particularly enjoyed seeing what REALLY happens in the Neighbours’ coffee shop; the steam machine to simulate making a coffee; ads for fictional Erinsborough businesses on the community notice board; plastic fruit and cans of food that not only expired in 2006, but are also glued to the shelves.
This wasn’t the first time I’d “acted” as an extra. I do have experience at not looking at cameras and pretending to have conversations with people without actually making any sound, having extra-ed on an episode of “McLeod’s Daughters” a few years ago (a scene that was cut), and more recently on Seven’s “Winners & Losers” (I’ll blog about that one in a few weeks!).
Obviously TV shows take a while to edit, and I neglected to ask what episode number they were filming. So to be honest, I completely forgot about the whole thing until an old high school friend from Adelaide (who I hadn’t spoken to in about 5 years) spotted me floating around in the background on TV last week.
Naturally I missed all of the broadcasts. But with the aid of online streaming technology, I was able to watch back last week’s shows and locate my three scenes.
Because you’re obviously a busy man/woman, I’ll now present highlights from those scenes, showcasing my brilliant and subtle acting skills as a background extra:
Episode 6167 – 24 May 2011
Coincidentally, my first Neighbours appearance happened to go to air on my birthday. Cheers Ten Network!
That’s me in the orange shirt (which is actually my shirt), pretending to shop at the cluttered single shelf at Harold’s Store. In reality I was just going through the stock and checking the expiration dates.
It was quite a bizarre combination of perishables. Pasta sauce and wasabi peas in the same display basket? I can’t imagine a real shop organising their produce in such a higgledy piggledy fashion. Harold wouldn’t last ten minutes in the cut-throat real world of small business ownership.
From this angle it looks like I’m leaning on Scott McGregor’s muscular shoulder:
Episode 6169 – 26 May 2011
Two days later I was back to steal a newspaper:
Much to the production team’s credit, that’s not just an old copy of the Herald Sun with “Erinsborough Star” pasted on the cover. They’ve actually gone to the effort to make real newspapers, complete with fictional stories about various local characters, written in the proper hard news reverse pyramid style!
I had a chance to read a couple of articles while we did a few takes.
Note also two other extras have returned to Harold’s Store, having swapped tables this time:
Episode 6170 – 27 May 2011
The very next day, I was back at Harold’s Store! I really think the audience was starting to become familiar with my character’s newspaper-reading, coffee-drinking, general loitering in the background kinda style.
And this time I seem to just hang out there for the whole day:
One of the best things about being an extra in the coffee shop was the free food! They actually have a real kitchen on site, and the production team routinely brings out real food and beverages for the extras to snack on during the scene.
In the above scene I’m drinking a latte. After an initial sip I realised they’d forgotten the sugar. I noticed there was some sugar on the table. However, when I went to tip some into my glass, the sugar remained stuck, fused to the bottom of the jar.
One of the cast actors offered me some advice, “Uh, I wouldn’t eat that if I were you.” It had obviously been there for YEARS.
They gave me a delicious danish as well. Some of the other extras had sandwiches. One guy even had a hamburger with chips. It was a pretty sweet deal – getting paid to sit there silently and eat – especially considering I skipped breakfast that morning.
Here I am eating a cupcake:
These coffee shop scenes appeared throughout the episode. And I’m in every one of them. I’m guessing my character doesn’t have anywhere else to be.
Towards the end of the episode the lighting on the other side of the front window was dimmed to indicate night time “outside”.
I grabbed one more coffee for the road, as veteran Neighbours resident Paul Robinson (Stefan Dennis) chats with Kate Ramsay (Ashleigh Brewer) in the foreground:
And with my take away coffee, which in reality was just an empty cup, I departed Harold’s Store – and Erinsborough – probably forever.
That’s my striped shirt on the other side of the door:
Now to launch my singing career!
You’ll be able to watch these episodes online in their entirety for a few more days, if you want a less static, but more drawn-out experience.
Kind regards,
David M. Green
Did you hear Madge died?
