‘This isn’t a competition’: Friends for decades, trio are now vying for a coveted Logie

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In its 35-year history, spanning more than 8000 episodes, the nightly soap opera Home and Away has clocked up an impressive 48 Logies from more than 170 nominations. (Plus three AACTA awards, seven Directors’ Guild awards and 14 Writers’ Guild awards.)

“Those numbers make me think of the work that is required to achieve that, from all the departments and the writers and directors,” says Emily Symons, who has for 34 years – less the eight years in the early noughties she spent on the UK soap Emmerdale – played Summer Bay’s dizzy but lovable Marilyn Chambers.

Home and Away’s Ada Nicodemou, Emily Symons and Lynne McGranger have all been nominated for the most popular actress award at this year’s Logies.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

“Where would we be without the people who work so hard to tell our amazing stories, the creatives, the crew, the long days?” Symons says. “Nobody realises how hard it is to make a television program like Home and Away, so it makes me very proud to hear numbers like that. Those are incredible numbers.”

This year Symons, 53, and her co-stars Lynne McGranger, 70, and Ada Nicodemou, 46, who play Pier Diner co-owners Irene Roberts and Leah Patterson, are hoping to add three more to that stash.

The three women, who have been colleagues and friends for more than two decades, are all nominated in the most popular actress category at this year’s 63rd Annual TV Week Logie Awards. (The other nominees are Celeste Barber for Wellmania, and Julia Zemiro and Kitty Flanagan for Fisk.)

It marks an important milestone too. Despite its historical reputation as a soap opera driven by teen storylines, one of the central tenets of Home and Away is the way it tells the stories of older women, particularly legacy characters who have been part of the fabric of its storytelling since its inception.

Emily Symons, Lynne McGranger and Ada Nicodemou.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

“I have this conversation a lot with my dear friend [and co-star] Georgie Parker, about telling the stories of older women’s friendships,” says Symons. “People actually are OK with watching a storyline with three or four women in their 50s and 60s. They don’t change channels.

“Home and Away is beautifully patterned, where we have a young person’s storyline, and these storylines revolving around older women, and they are woven around each other beautifully. That is what Home and Away does best. They can do all kinds of stories.”

Sometimes, though, looking back can be a wild ride.

Symons: “I look at [old episodes] very fondly. I think that early Marilyn period was really fun and fabulous, and I was so young. It makes me very nostalgic because I think those early years were completely bonkers.”

Marilyn Chambers (Emily Symons) and Alf Stewart (Ray Meagher) in a publicity shot of Home and Away.

Nicodemou: “I was at school when the show started, and now I’m in it. It’s been a constant for such a long time. Everyone has a character that they relate to. There are so many life stages of the show.”

McGranger: “When I started on the show [at 39] there was this assumption I knew what I was doing. I didn’t have a bloody clue. Judy Nunn was the queen. She didn’t even have to think about it. It was second nature.”

Nicodemou: “There is a great sense of community. It’s like your happy place, but it tackles some really big issues. Twenty years ago, we didn’t get the respect that we get now. We’ve got a seat at the table, and I like that.”

At the heart of the relationship between these three women is a robust friendship. The fourth member of the quartet, says McGranger, is their co-star Parker. The former A Country Practice and All Saints star was not nominated alongside the trio this year, but she’s not short of a Logie herself, having won six, including two Gold Logies.

One of the central tenets of Home and Away is the way it tells the stories of older women.

“Ada and I naturally gravitate together, and in a way Georgie and Em naturally gravitate together,” says McGranger. “But the four of us all get on very well, and we all share similar interests. We also connect over different things … and talk to each other about all sorts of things.”

Such friendships, in an industry that has not historically or naturally nurtured them, are important, says Symons. “We have a lot of intense chats out the back,” she says. “There’s a little kitchen that we call my office, and that’s where we go and hang. We share everything, books, movies, life. It’s very, very important to me.”

And such friendships start at the top, adds Nicodemou, referring to the show’s executive producer Julie McGauran, producer Lucy Addario and production manager Amber Gardiner. “We have also gone through a lot of life stages together,” adds Nicodemou.

Leah (Ada Nicodemou) marries Zac (Charlie Clausen) in the 2015 season of Home and Away.

It’s a microcosm of life, chimes in McGranger. “Some people are with you for a reason, some for a season, some for a lifetime,” she says. “With the women on Home and Away, we have a very tight bond. We have our ups and downs, but we are there for each other, and we support each other.”

But with six nominees and one prize, only one of them has a shot at coming up trumps.

Symons: “A win for any of us is a win for the show. So it’s an award for everybody. If any of us wins it, I will be delighted. I’m just delighted to be nominated. I’m beside myself.”

Lynne McGranger in a 2003 promotional shot for Home and Away.

Nicodemou: “I’d love Lynne to win, we all love her and she’s a real icon on Australian TV. But this isn’t a competition. It’s just lovely to be up there.”

McGranger: “Or maybe Julia Zemiro or Kitty Flanagan or Celeste Barber will win. I would love one of us to win. It would be great for the show. And I want the show to win because then that’s something everyone can rejoice in.”

This year’s Logies marks the first time they are back in Sydney after a gap of 37 years. They were previously held in Sydney in 1986; in the intervening years they have been mostly staged in their spiritual home of Melbourne, and for the last three years on the Gold Coast.

Nicodemou: “Sydney will put on a great show, but I remember the Logies in Melbourne, and I think it’s just because I’m just reminiscing about going down on the Saturday [for the weekend]. There’s something about Melbourne that I do really miss.”

Symons: “We’re all a bit disappointed we’re not going away for the weekend because it was our annual school trip. It’s a little different this year, but we’re all still very excited. It is really television’s night of nights for us, particularly me. I don’t get out much.”

McGranger: “I think they belong wherever the actors are assembled to rejoice and to enjoy and to celebrate. Melbourne was an institution. I enjoyed the Gold Coast because it wasn’t as cold. And now, July 30? Could they have picked a colder day in the world? But we’re looking forward to the whole Sydney thing.”

The 63rd Annual TV Week Logie Awards are on Seven and 7Plus, Sunday, July 30, from 7pm.

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