Neighbours fan Liz Nicholls chats to one of her heroes, Ryan Moloney, who has played Toadfish in beloved Aussie soap for 30 years and is sharing his behind-the-scenes stories with the Toad On The Road UK tour.
G’day fellow Neighbours fans (and fans-to-be)! This week I was honoured to chat to Neighbours royalty: Ryan Moloney who has played Jarrod Vincenzo “Toadfish” Rebecchi for an astonishing 30 years.
In case you missed the memo, Toadie is leaving the beloved soap very soon which is why he’s in the UK. Ryan is hosting the Toad on the Road show which stops at The Anvil Basingstoke this Friday, 13th September, and has been winning rave reviews so far!
Toadie has survived a brutal kidnapping, croc attack and breakdown in Neighbours’ thrilling #DeathInTheOutback week but we’re still unsure what form his demise might take… But it can’t be that final, can it, Ryan? Bear in mind that Dionne (my personal favourite of the Toad’s five wives, along with her evil twin… but that’s another story) came back from the dead after plummeting off a cliff, and Harrold Bishop was also famously resurrected. Is this really the end of the Toad? “Ummm. Well, yeah… Nothing’s ever final, but I think it might be for Toadie!”
Q&A with Ryan Moloney
Wow, ok, no spoilers! Toadie’s has a lot of trauma over the past three decades, hasn’t he? I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone cry so much on screen! How do you do that?!
“Well, actually that’s part of the Toad On The Road show. When you’re younger, you spend a lot of time trying to extend your skills and make things more real so you can connect with your audience more. And the more truthful and honest things are for me, it’s almost like the less I have to act. And from that point on, there’s access to this emotionally deep well.”
It’s so good to see mental health – my favourite subject – explored in my favourite soap…
“Yeah, absolutely. Mental health is not necessarily something that we show on television. I get that it’s a tough subject, but I think we need to show it. It’s part of our psyche, our world, so we should represent these stories. That’s the thing about watching shows, television, movies, hearing music, it connects people. If you don’t see this stuff on television, it almost shuns people going through stuff and makes them feel mental health problems are something that we need to push away. But it’s something that so many people deal with.
“That’s why I’m so glad that this is actually what I’m doing for my last year on Neighbours. We get to tell the story of this character’s mental demise. Thirty years of trauma catches up with Toadie and he ends up having a psychotic snap. And then by the end of it he has a realisation… This is almost my last gift, in a way. This is what I want to go out with.”
When it was announced that Neighbours was ending in 2022, it was a big shock to fans. Then the whole world tuned in for the finale, starring the likes of Guy Ritchie, Kylie and Margot Robbie. Is it down to the love of the fans that Neighbours is back, for a year now, with a new network?
“Absolutely! It would not have come back without the fans’ demand for Neighbours to exist. And I think it was almost like a happy accident that Amazon wanted to launch Freevee. If I was Amazon, I’d be thinking: ‘What am I going to launch with?’ And here’s this show with an audience just screaming for it back on TV.”
Apart from Neighbours, what’s your favourite TV show, and what’s your favourite film?
“Oooh film is a tough one but I’d say Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels or Snatch: I love films that are not just your run-of-the-mill kind of storytelling.
“But I don’t actually watch a lot of TV. I’m too busy kind of building things and learning things, mainly mechanics. I tend to spend a lot of time on YouTube, just kind of going down rabbit holes. At the moment I’m trying to make my son’s go-kart go faster! Apart from doing a directing traineeship with the Neighbours team, I do a lot of things. We’re building farms, and I do civil construction. Mainly, now I just want to spend time with my kids. My daughter’s coming up 18 and my son’s just turned 16. And I want to just be able to grab that last second with them before they disappear.”
There’s a lot to be celebrated about Toadie. How much of Toadie is in you, Ryan?
“I’d say, you know, he’s probably about 25% like me. Toadie’s a knight in shining armour and one of the main drivers behind him is that he’s the eternal loser. We always need him to lose so we can get behind him. So we give him little wins and then we make him lose. He’s a generous person, always looking out for other people; that’s very much me. But also, he makes some very bad decisions and he doesn’t seem to learn from his past behaviours: I don’t think that’s me! Nobody can always be liked, that’s for sure. I think it’s important to have off-putting elements in a character like Toadie, because that’s real.”
Speaking of which, as much as I love Toadie, Paul is my favourite character… So what’s Stefan Dennis (one of the finest actors of our generation) like behind the scenes?
“Ahhh he’s such a lovely fella. I absolutely love Steffi. He’s just so kind and generous and he’s pretty funny too.
“I love Paul too! He’s the character that you just love to hate. I can’t believe that everyone keeps getting sucked in! See here’s the thing, right? If Toad is the eternal loser, Paul is the baddie who comes good in a way. He’s a… winner! The audience always want him to come good and then he does for a period of time. But the important thing to remember is that he is completely flawed and he will never be truly good!”
I’m really looking forward to the show on Friday! So what can people expect from Toad On The Road?
“You can expect a journey. It’s not superficial, we talk about Neighbours and storylines and whatnot, but it’s really kind of the conduit for explaining character development, how we actually use structures to create families, and how we get audience to buy-in, and then manage and manipulate that audience buy-in as well. But on top of that, then it’s also about how the really emotional stuff. The beautiful thing is that when people come and see it, when they leave, they’re like, wow, I was not expecting that.
“It’s bigger than Neighbours…”
Bigger than Neighbours? Nahhh!
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Neighbours quiz
Q1. As a teen troublemaker Toadie tried to blackmail Lucy Robinson with nudie centrefolds in which fictional British porn magazine?
Q2. Toadie and Hannah Martin found buried treasure when Hannah’s dog dug up an old tin box. Name that dog! (It’s not Bouncer).
Q3. While living at the Kennedys with his surrogate parents Karl and Susan, Toadie had a turkey that was supposed to be dinner but became a beloved pet. Name that turkey!
Q4. In which nightclub did Toadie meet his future wife Dee?
