Stefan Dennis – who played iconic Neighbours character Paul Robinson – has taken a dig at the Logies for neglecting to acknowledge some of the hit soap’s biggest stars.
While Neighbours was acknowledged at the awards ceremony, the show was represented by actors Daniel McPherson and Natalie Bassingthwaite who respectively starred in the show for four and five years.
Meanwhile, some of the other cast members spent a lot longer working on the soap – like Dennis who is the longest serving cast member and appeared on the show for 37 years. Neighbours also only received a short tribute at the ceremony.
“It was a sore point, the old Logies, I’m pretty pissed off and I wasn’t alone,” Dennis told the 2Day FM’s Hughesy, Ed and Erin breakfast show this morning.
“I was trying to keep check because I didn’t want to get angry and turn it into a bad night. It was basically a snub.
“Thirty-eight years, the longest running show in Australian television history with the accolades it has, it’s about the industry and what the show has been and meant for four decades.
“For it to get a tribute of 40 seconds, fuck off.”
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Jackie Woodburne, who played Susan Kennedy – a character that’s synonymous with the show and who spent she spent 28 years playing – echoed the sentiment.
“I thought it was very disrespectful to us and to the industry,” Woodburne said.
“That was the best they could do. It felt like a slap in the face and undeserved because I know how hard everyone works.
“It was very unsophisticated … why bother? If you can’t do it properly, why bother?”
The furious statements come after the actor, Ryan Moloney who has played “Toadie” since 1995, unleashed a spray last week about the treatment he and his co-stars received at this year’s Logies.
We turned up, and we did our mandatory three-hour talking to people on the red carpet… When we got in the room we ended up being split up and stuck on two different tables, it was horrible!” Moloney told the same radio show.
“Our table was actually even stuck behind the cameras, we couldn’t even see the stage… So we figured we weren’t going to get a gig then.” The actor was also dismayed by the footage of Neighbours that was shown during the ceremony, calling it “incredibly disappointing.”
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