Neighbours cast reveal more on Holly and Andrew’s affair

As Holly and Andrew finally kiss in today’s episode of Neighbours, the actors behind the characters tell us what’s in store for their steamy affair.

Today’s Neighbours saw Holly (Lucinda Armstrong Hall) and Andrew (Lloyd Will) finally kiss, after months of dancing around their feelings for one another.

Unfortunately for them, the preview for next Monday’s episode revealed that Rhett (Liam Maguire) spotted the two kissing, and soon tells Aaron (Matt Wilson) what he’s seen!

When Aaron confronts Holly, she denies everything, and Aaron is left believing that Rhett is mistaken – or, worse, that he invented the story to get back at Andrew for giving him a ticket last week.

However, new teaser spoilers for late August have hinted that Aaron will eventually discover the pair’s big secret, leading to a confrontation in the garden of No. 26. However, when Wendy (Candice Leask) interrupts, it looks like their secret is safe… for now!

When Aaron and Rhett leave Erinsborough on 1st September, it appears that they’ll be taking Holly and Andrew’s secret with them. However, with less than 5 months left until Neighbours’ final episode, their affair is sure to get revealed before the end.

Earlier this year, we sat down with Lucinda Armstrong Hall (Holly), Lloyd Will (Andrew), Alan Fletcher (Karl) and Jackie Woodburne (Susan) to discuss the shocking new storyline, which is sure to rip at least one family apart.

You can read the first part of the interview here – and now, as the pair finally cross a line, Lucinda, Lloyd, Alan and Jackie tell us what’s to come in the weeks and months ahead.

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What do you think it is that has attracted Andrew to Holly?

Lloyd Will – “She’s a force. And I mean, I think Wendy has got some similar attributes where Wendy just kind of like goes and does things. I think, yeah, she’s a force of a person.

“And I think he started to see her not as Sadie’s best friend, who’s a young girl. He started to see her as a fully fledged woman because of what she’d experienced and what she’s gone through.

“And he was there for a lot of those things. He came and saved her from Bowman and that was part of their connection. That’s what really started things; Bowman came back and Andrew was really concerned about her.

“And they divulged all of those secrets, all those inner feelings with each other about their upbringings. I think Andrew genuinely felt a sense of deep care and understanding, because even though they’re super different, there are some similarities.

“Like Andrew didn’t know his biological parents. He made an assumption that they were bad people. And I think you connect over those really deep things, and like parents and siblings, that’s the deepest of the deepest things.”

Holly has had quite a difficult relationship with her mom, and has previously worried that she’s becoming more like Izzy. Is this affair her going full-on Izzy?

Lucinda Armstrong Hall – “I think it sneaks up on her. I think in her mind, she can see objectively where her mom has gone wrong in the past and can see that the choices that Izzy made aren’t good. But this situation comes along and it takes her a minute to realise, ‘Oh my God, I’m doing what she did.’

“But I think in Holly’s mind it’s different. You know, this is real and there’s real feelings there and it’s complicated.

“I don’t think she’s consciously thinking about it, but it’s definitely going to be something that she’ll beat herself up for.”

What about the impact on those close to your characters – Wendy, Max, Sadie?

Lloyd Will – “We haven’t even yet seen the fallout where we’re shooting. We’re not in the fallout yet – almost. No one really knows yet.

“But everything before that, the whole process of them being together, it means that Andrew’s working late and always out and having to lie and that influences the relationship.

“So it’s affecting Wendy anyway. It’s affecting Sadie anyway. It’s affecting everyone, regardless of whether they know.”

Are there thoughts and feelings going on for Holly about Andrew being Sadie’s dad?

Lucinda Armstrong Hall – “Yeah, definitely. I think she feels guilty about it, she pushes all of her friends away and just chooses to isolate herself. As I guess you maybe would.

“She can’t even really look Sadie in the eye, especially once it gets to a certain point with Andrew.

“So I think Holly really decides that she’s gonna go 100% all in for Andrew and literally ruin any other aspect of her life. And she just has tunnel vision for this one thing that she really wants to work out.”

Aaron is the first of their friends to find out about the affair. Once Aaron knows, how hard is it to keep it from your friends and family?

Lucinda Armstrong Hall – “Yeah, that’s the moment where Holly and Andrew are like, ‘Oh my God, this is about to come out right now.’”

Lloyd Will – “‘What are we doing?’”

Lucinda Armstrong Hall – “Yeah, it’s a real wake-up call. And it happens right after they’ve agreed to go their separate ways.”

Lloyd Will – “Yeah, it’s a weird thing that what it ends up becoming, because it almost ramps it up in a way.”

Lucinda Armstrong Hall – “Cause then they have this secret that they need to work harder to keep.”

Lloyd Will – “It just intensifies the emotions of it too.”

Lucinda Armstrong Hall – “But it’s like, ‘Oh my God, the house of cards is about to fall.’”

Karl has had an affair in the past, and now Holly’s going to be the other woman in the Rodwell marriage. How’s Susan going to take that?

Lucinda Armstrong Hall– “There’s so many facets to this. There’s Sadie, there’s Max, there’s Wendy, there’s Karl and Susan.

“I think it’s maybe a self-fulfilling prophecy because ever since she was young, when I was on the show when I was younger, Holly was sort of the outsider. She wasn’t a Kennedy.

“So she wasn’t part of that family portrait, and she was the love child that came out of nowhere.

“So I think it’s sort of like a self-fulfilling prophecy in the way that it’s isolating her more. And she feels like even more of an outsider and a traitor in her own home.”

Holly’s always tried to fight the side of her that resembles Izzy, and be more like Karl. But actually, Karl has some bad traits too…

Alan Fletcher – “Well, I don’t think promiscuity is necessarily genetic, but that would be an interesting theory to test with a PhD. I’ve just been listening to an episode about Peter the Great, Peter the Great of Russia, and it seems as though all of his children were very promiscuous. So I guess maybe it does play through.

“No, I think in Holly’s case, that’s a natural guilt. I think it’s just… I mean, why she has the affair is, I think, simply that she can’t fight it.

“There’s a mutual attraction between them, she talks about that in script. So no, I don’t think there’s any kind of Izzy-ness in Holly, in the sense that she’s not ever looking to try and manipulate the situation. But she’s a very impetuous girl.”

Jackie Woodburne – “And she’s very susceptible to being shown love. So when someone shows her love, even if all the signs are there that should say ‘stay away, stay away’, she’s very vulnerable to that because I think that’s something that she probably hasn’t had enough of in her life.

Alan Fletcher – “There’s no question that Izzy’s pushed her aside a number of times. She came back on one occasion and Izzy had a new boyfriend and she just swanned off to Europe and left Holly behind. And Karl has always felt that he was too absent a father, which is why he lets her get away with so much that she gets away with because he doesn’t want to push her away.

“So, I mean, I think that’s a very big thing that Jackie has hit on there, is the desperate need for love. Everyone wants to be loved, and she needs to feel that.”

Holly’s storylines have been such an important part of the Amazon era. How has it been for you both having Lucinda back for the last couple of years?

Jackie Woodburne – “She’s our little gem, isn’t she?”

Alan Fletcher – “She’s an extraordinary actress.”

Jackie Woodburne – “She’s so great. She doesn’t retreat from anything. I mean, there are a lot of characteristics in Holly that are unpleasant characteristics and she never, ever, ever retreats from them.

“Some actors will try and pull back a bit because they don’t want their character to be that unsympathetic. She doesn’t do that. She walks into it full force and it’s such a great thing for an actor to be able to do.

“She’s just a delight to work with and to watch what she comes up with in a really, really difficult role, I think.”

Alan Fletcher – “Yeah, she’s had everything thrown at her.”

Jackie Woodburne – “Yeah. She just grabs it and goes with it, doesn’t she?”

Alan Fletcher – “And carries it off brilliantly.”

How do you feel about wrapping up this show so soon? And obviously wrapping up these storylines, these characters?

Lucinda Armstrong Hall – “Yeah, it’s really sad. It’s sad that the show’s going to wrap up and at such like a pivotal time for our characters. I really don’t know, I’m curious what would have happened to Holly and Andrew’s trajectory if the show kept going.”

Lloyd Will – “It’s so sad. We’ve had a good amount of time on the show, we’re really lucky.

“I think I’m so sad for all the other actors that don’t get to cut their teeth on this show and experience what we got to experience because it really is so unique. It’s such a unique working environment in this country.”

Lucinda Armstrong Hall – “It’s such an important training ground as well. I’ve learned stuff here that I couldn’t have learnt in drama school; it’s been a massive training place. So it is really sad.”

Lloyd Will – “We worked out, in order to get the same amount of on-set time in three years, you’d need to shoot like 15 shows or something like that. Cause it’s 38 or 40 weeks a year full-time.

“So if you want to get that amount of time on set, reading scripts, working with directors, working with actors, you’ve got to be in a play or you’ve got to shoot like 10 shows or something.”

Lucinda Armstrong Hall – “And we’re really lucky here. We really do have like the nicest cast and crew, it feels like a big family and we’ve gotten to see these people every day for years and yeah, we’re really lucky to work with like some of the greatest people.”

Jackie Woodburne – “Oh gosh. Look, you know, it’s different this time.

“The first time, we were all so hopeful that we would continue and we did believe that we would. So it was heartbreak. We weren’t expecting it. We were all devastated. We had so many more stories to tell. We had so much still in the tank.

“I think this time the fact that, you know, we got two years with Amazon, which was brilliant. And then when they were crunching numbers, we got another three months. And I think that was sort of an indicator to everybody that possibly the outcome was not going to be great.

“I think that gave everyone the opportunity to get their head around it. So this time we’re so sad on so many levels because we don’t get to come and do this wonderful job with people we love. And also for the industry on a bigger scale.

“There just will never be anywhere like this for young people to come in, learn their trade, get their skills up and be involved in a show like this.”

 

Alan Fletcher –”It’s the best school you could imagine. I think the first time the show ended, it was so sudden for the fans and they were shattered. So many of them.

“And that really hurt, you know, having to read all the comments and have people contacting you going, you know, there’s got to be something we can do and so forth. That’s still happening. But I think there’s a lot more people who have resigned to it.

“So hopefully people will still grieve because the show means so much to so many people. But hopefully they’ll rejoice in the fact that we did get the extra two and a bit years. And it brought us a new level of world awareness with Amazon taking us into America and other places.

“So the show really has benefited from that. And so hopefully people will rejoice with us as we go towards the end and just celebrate the fact that we had this beautiful 40 years. I’m sure they will.”

Jackie Woodburne – “I mean, ultimately, I think we all just feel gratitude that we got to be a part of this wonderful thing called Neighbours.”