It’s the end of an era. Actor Ryan Moloney, who’s played Jarrod ‘Toadfish’ Rebecchi on Neighbours for almost 30 years, has announced he’s leaving the beloved Australian soap opera.
Moloney, 44, made the announcement himself in a video posted to Neighbours’ Instagram account yesterday. He introduced himself as “formerly Jarrod ‘Toadfish’ Rebecchi – that’s right, I did say formerly, because after 30 years playing Toadie, I will be leaving Ramsay Street.”
“I can’t tell you what is happening to the character – maybe I could be the next Jim Robinson. Or maybe I’ll be the next Harold Bishop and just keep popping back over the years.”
Moloney gave a hint as to what he plans to do next in his career, revealing that he’d recently started training as a director and hoped to pursue more work behind the camera. In fact, he shared that he’d just finished on his first Neighbours episode as a director.
“Thank you all so much for all the love that you have shown me and Toadie over the years. For three decades, in fact. I’m going to miss you, I’m going to miss him, and I’m going to miss Erinsborough. But whatever you do, make sure you do not miss what is going to happen on Ramsay Street,” he said.
Fans shared their emotional reactions to the news they’d be saying goodbye to a character who’s been on screens since the mid-90s.
“Omg What?! Toadie is iconic. Won’t be the same. Hopefully he comes back to Erinsborough for a visit,” wrote one viewer.
“This is so sad! I hope he keeps ‘popping back’ to the street rather than die. I am going to miss toadie,” said another.
More Coverage
“This can’t happen! We need Toadie!” another fan demanded.
Moloney made his debut on Neighbours as a teen in 1995, and stayed with the show until it was axed in 2022. He was then one of the returning cast members when the show was rebooted a year later.
And Toadfish has certainly had a dramatic life in Erinsborough over the years: Moloney’s character has been married no less than five times, including one memorable wedding that ended with he and his new bride driving off a cliff into the ocean.
It’s no secret that the Princess of Wales is a major force within the royal family – and her absence from duties has been keenly felt.
The former private secretary to the late Princess Diana, Patrick Jephson, has laid bare the blunt truth about its wider impact on the monarchy, telling Vanity Fair “it all seems rather flat” without her.
“The future of the monarchy is William and Catherine,” he pointed out.
“And, as we know from any superficial study of the British royal family, it’s the women who pull the show together, who get out there and make things happen.
“So how fragile is the monarchy? Well, it’s as fragile as Catherine is, and at the moment, we don’t know.”
He continued: “Without her, the institution would surely be reduced to a shadow of itself. Given the Windsors’ drastically thinned ranks, she is the crown’s best hope by far. She combines duty and beauty with a piercing vulnerability second only to Prince William’s mother.”
Kate’s undisclosed type of cancer was discovered during a planned abdominal surgery in January, and she revealed her diagnosis and the fact she was undergoing “preventive chemotherapy” during an emotional video message in March.
According to an aide who spoke to Vanity Fair, her and Prince William’s three children – Prince George, 10, Princess Charlotte, 9, and Prince Louis, 6 – were kept from the truth of her cancer initially, but Kate was “determined to be honest with them and told them in a way they could understand.”
Sources close to the Wales’ also told the publication that the family are having a “terribly hard time”, but as their former private secretary, Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, explained, Kate has “an inner strength” upon which she will be “drawing”.
The princess praised her husband for his support in her statement in March, and a friend of the couple added that he’d also, understandably, been struggling with his wife’s diagnosis.
“William is a human being like everyone else, and it’s been a really difficult time for him, too,” the source said.
“I think what’s important to him is that he’s there to support his wife and his children while continuing with his public duties.”
Despite the challenging period, aides stressed that when Kate does return full-time to public duties, she will “pick up where she left off”.
After months away from the spotlight, she made a high-profile return to public life this month at the Trooping the Colour parade – an annual event held in honour of the sovereign’s birthday.
A beaming Kate delighted fans as she travelled from Buckingham Palace to Horse Guards’ Parade alongside her three children.
It was the first time she’d been seen in an official capacity since last Christmas Day.
It’s understood Kate – who spoke of her “good days” and “bad days” in her deeply personal statement on June 15 – now plans to spend time with her children and work from home as she continues with her recovery.
The Sun also reports that the princess is planning to hold more meetings in the coming weeks, including palace staff as well as members of The Royal Foundation and Centre for Early Childhood, although public updates will only be provided “when appropriate”.
In her statement, Kate had tentatively hinted at her future plans.
“On the days I feel well enough, it is a joy to engage with school life, spend personal time on the things that give me energy and positivity, as well as starting to do a little work from home,” she said.
“I’m looking forward to attending The King’s Birthday Parade this weekend with my family and hope to join a few public engagements over the summer, but equally knowing I am not out of the woods yet.
“I am learning how to be patient, especially with uncertainty. Taking each day as it comes, listening to my body, and allowing myself to take this much needed time to heal.”
More Coverage
Elsewhere in her message, Kate opened up about the more challenging aspects of her treatment and recovery.
“I am making good progress, but as anyone going through chemotherapy will know, there are good days and bad days,” she said.
“On those bad days you feel weak, tired and you have to give in to your body resting. But on the good days, when you feel stronger, you want to make the most of feeling well.”
The twin sister of late ’90s star Aaron Carter has recalled the harrowing moment the singer fell into psychosis and claimed he wanted to “kill babies”.
Carter tragically struggled with drugs since the age of 12, and he led a troubled life until his death in 2022.
His twin sister, Angel, has now opened up in a new podcast about her struggles trying to help her brother, recalling an horrific period during the summer of 2019 when Carter experienced an alleged episode of psychosis amid his diagnosis of bipolar and schizophrenia disorders.
Angel has alleged Aaron told her about his thoughts of “killing babies” and how he started to accumulate several guns within a week.
The situation led Angel - who was a new mum to daughter Harper Noelle Conrad - and their older brother, Nick, to file a restraining order against the singer. The court order led to Aaron’s guns being taken away.
“I had to protect him from himself,” Angel said as she teared up.
Angel blamed the hitmaker’s downfall on the years he was “exploited and used” by the people around him since the start of his career at age nine.
“I couldn’t save him,” she said. “It wasn’t my responsibility to save him but I tried.”
Elsewhere in the episode, Angel explained that Aaron was the “breadwinner” of their family. She recalled the pop star believing their parents’ 2003 divorce was his fault as they were torn apart by the greed of his success.
“He thought that the success destroyed the family,” she said.
More Coverage
While Aaron started experimenting with marijuana before his parents split when he was 12, it wasn’t until they officially called it quits that he started taking “hard” drugs.
“He was experimenting with ecstasy and huffing duster cans,” Angel claimed, recalling she didn’t find out until “years later” that Aaron continued the “bad stuff” into his 20s.
Aaron was found dead in a bathtub at his California estate after slipping and falling. He was 34. His death was ruled accidental, though he was found to be under the influence of several substances. A year later, the father of one’s 41-year-old sister, Bobbie Jean, died from drug abuse.
The truth behind why MasterChef Australia axed a much-loved part of the show has finally been revealed.
Last year, after almost a decade, Channel 10 ditched MasterChef Australia‘s iconic intro featuring Katy Perry‘s Hot N Cold.
Fans questioned the change last year, and now more have emerged this year still asking “what gives, Channel 10?”
“The cute shots they used to accompany the song meant we all learned who all the contestants were after just a few night,” said one fan, after many this year complained of not being able to recognise everyone during the early stages.
“Does anyone know why they got rid of the opening with the contestants and the theme song? ‘Hot N Cold’, [was it] too expensive? Harder to know the contestants this way,” questioned another.
A third complained: “I hadn’t even noticed it was missing until now and, can’t lie, don’t want it back,” while a fourth commented: “ “I’ve said it before and so have others! Bring back the opening theme song! Please!”
Another viewer asked: “Does anyone know why they got rid of the opening with the contestants and the theme song? ‘Hot N Cold’, [was it] too expensive? Harder to know the contestants this way.”
According to a spokesman, axing the song actually had nothing to do with how much the rights to use it were costing.
Instead, it was simply to save time.
More Coverage
“The opening credits were removed in Season 15 2023. The decision was made to get into the action faster at the top of each episode,” said the 10 spokesman.
Meanwhile, the latest season of MasterChef Australia has been a big hit for the network, regularly drawing in well over 700,000 viewers while it airs live on Network 10 and 10Play.
MasterChef Australia airs Sunday to Wednesday at 7.30pm on 10 and 10 Play.
This week a new portrait was unveiled of Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex with him painted as Bonnie Prince Charlie, James II’s grandson and the pretender to the throne who reckoned he was meant to be King.
Charlie, having hared off to foreign shores to bang on about how hard done by he had been by the crown, then drummed up support for his separatist cause only to return to have a crack at retaking England. It was nothing short of an unmitigated disaster and was the last pitched battle on British soil.
It’s a tale that has a certain familiar ring to it, no?
For years now another pitched battle has been going on, only involving fewer bayonets and broadswords and a lot more banging on about the indignity of being given the smaller bedroom at Balmoral.
Like Charlie a couple of centuries before him, Harry has discovered that besting the crown can be much harder than it looks.
The last month has only reinforced this. If anyone is keeping score then we can very clearly see that Prince William has had a humdinger of a June while Harry has seemingly disappeared underground.
William’s beaut of a month was officially declared this week after Travis Kelce, Taylor Swift’s steady squeeze, and his brother Jason used their podcast to enthuse, and enthuse some more, about how “cool” the prince is after meeting him backstage at one of Swift’s London shows.
“Dude, he was the coolest motherf----r. He was so cool,” Travis said, also saying that he was
“very genuine, very cool” and that it was “an absolute delight” meeting him, Prince George and Princess Charlotte.
“If anyone’s doing it right, William’s doing it right. So thank you, Your Royal Highness, it was awesome meeting you. And very much Charlotte and George,” he effused.
The combination of Taylor, Travis, the Prince of Wales and his eldest children all in one selfie nearly crippled social media this week, with the shot being viewed more than 63 million times on X, formerly Twitter alone, the only platform where there are easily available numbers.
It is hard to overstate him having just gotten the tick of approval from the most potent and powerful cultural force on the planet in the form of Taylor. It might be decades before William is actually crowned but this week saw the pop culture equivalent. Call it ‘The King -the zeitgeist version’.
That Eras tour masterstroke and now the Kelces raving about the prince have capped off a month that has seen things turn a corner for the Waleses after a rotter of a year. Kate made her triumphant comeback, partially at least, by appearing at Trooping the Colour; not one but two new photo portraits of William and the kids, and both taken by the princess, did some very brisk and successful social media and press business; and the prince was officially crowned Dad of the Year, Windsor Estate Edition by taking his kids to see Taylor – and then managing to engineer that internet-rattling selfie.
There were plenty of other nice bits and pieces too in case you want to make sure that your scrapbook is up to date: William got to have a go at being a true global statesman alongside Presidents including Joe Biden at the D-Day commemorations in France; he went to Ascot and was showered with cousinly affection; he got to don his ridiculous Order of the Garter robe (does any adult ever not look ridiculous in velvet?) and revel in being a member of the 675-year-old chivalric order; and someone probably surprised him with a Waitrose mud cake and handmade card covered in Uhu-ed teensy, spare rubies Prince Louis had found down the back of a sofa for his 42nd birthday.
And then we have Harry, who is a mystery, wrapped in a riddle, swaddled in organic cotton and the whiff of a certain aimlessness and rudderlessness.
Remarkably, both he and wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex have not been seen once this June. Not one pap shot of them doing something so extraordinary as going out to eat or walking. Neither of them have done an interview or a podcast or a roundtable or appeared in a selfie or done a single charity thingamabob.
After their successful mini look-we-made-it-ourselves tour of Nigeria in early May, the Sussexes have, it seems, gone to ground.
On the upside, this well could be exactly what they want. 30 days-plus of living a life wholly unmolested by the press or even Californian onlookers furtively snapping iPhone shots of the duke picking up an iced mocha with extra whipped cream to go when Meghan wasn’t looking? This apparent peace has got to be the dream for the couple for whom leering public and media intrusion has long been a major stressor.
Still the question, as always for the Sussexes, is what next? What next for the duke and duchess as they build and shape the next phase of their US lives? What next for two people who left the starched, gaoling embrace of the palace to forge their own way into the great unknown?
Maybe a year from now Meghan’s American Riviera Orchard jam will be on breakfast tables the length and breadth of the continental United States and Harry’s polo series for Netflix will have stormed the streamer’s charts making the sport so popular that JCrew has started selling jodhpurs and you can get a polo mallet at Macy’s.
More Coverage
But in the meantime, just as William’s global consequence and cultural currency seems to be expanding, the Sussexes seem to have vanished off into a mysterious fug with no end of question marks hanging over their futures and careers.
As we wait to see what the coming months bring, believe me when I say that it’s taking every fibre of my being to not finish this all up with a line about ‘shaking it off’ …
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
Artist Jasmine Crisp creates her monumental self-portrait, at street art festival Without Frontiers.(Supplied: Jasmine Crisp)
Surrounded by paint cans, Adelaide/Tarntanya mural artist Jasmine Crisp hovers on a crane above the streets of Mantova. The small lake-encircled Italian city, also known as Mantua, is located about halfway between Venice and Milan, and is steeped in art history.
Crisp's maximalist and playful large-scale portraits already adorn walls in several Australian cities. But it was one of her "biggest ever life dreams" to paint an original international mural — and she had only one week to complete it.
Artist Jasmine Crisp's large-scale portrait is inspired by the role of women in history and her own life.
(Supplied: Jasmine Crisp)
"I had a shopping trolley full of paint that I would transport to and from the site every day… For me, this was the tightest timeline I've had for a wall of this scale," Crisp says.
Artist Jasmine Crisp has already created permanent large scale murals for festivals in Adelaide, Brisbane and Geelong.(Photo: Jenn Garo )
For more than 12 hours a day, she worked to transform the wall-sized canvas into an image stretching more than three storeys high and 10 metres wide.
While some artists use aerosols or spray guns to create large-scale paintings, Crisp paints by hand, working meticulously, brushstroke by brushstroke.
She is one of four artists from around the world who has been invited to participate in the public art festival Without Frontiers — alongside fellow Adelaide artist Seb Humphreys and muralists from Spain and Argentina.
The event brings art from the heart of Mantua, the 2016 "Italian Capital of Culture", to a lower socio-economic area on the outskirts of the city called Lunetta. With the festival in its ninth year, Lunetta's streets are becoming increasingly kaleidoscopic.
Making the personal public
The story Crisp chose to share with the Lunetta community is one of the most personal she's ever produced.
Titled "She brought them with her (self portrait far from home)", the work is an enormous portrait of Crisp, which explores her choice as a woman to pursue a career as an artist and not marry or have children.
Crisp had only a week to complete the large-scale mural. (Supplied: Jasmine Crisp)
The concept emerged during her recent residency in Mexico, where Crisp was researching the historic relationship between women and domesticity and started contemplating her own contemporary path in the lead up to her 30th birthday.
"This painting is directly informed by readings based on the role of women in the home throughout history, and shifts toward breaking this mould as new generations live alone, travel [and] expand their careers — no longer restricted to the once-sole purposes of motherhood and wifely duties," she explains.
Jasmine Crisp is known for her use of symbols in her artwork.
(Supplied: Jasmine Crisp)
"[It depicts] an image of my mum floating over my chest and many other symbols from historic portraiture and art, [with] the aim of making it about how the women before me have allowed me to have a life of complete independence.
"Overall, this is a gratuitous yet somewhat existential reflection on aging, family lineage, life purpose, privilege, belonging and the journey of home and self."
Through her murals, Crisp aims to take stories that are often kept behind closed doors — the personal, private and intimate — and turn them into "large and very public totems".
"It's my goal with murals [to make] visible topics that aren't usually shared with strangers on the street."
Crisps describes her work as "visual tales". Her narrative-rich images bring together traditional and contemporary approaches to portraiture.
(Photo: Jenn Garo )
As she shared her story in Mantua through paint, Crisp experienced a reaction from the community she hadn't had before in Australia.
"Although a lot of the time I couldn't converse with locals without a translator, I found that people would watch for hours … and got really invested in the progress of the piece, asking questions about the subject matter and story in a way that felt really rewarding and rich," she explains.
"In Australia, murals can be seen more as advertising or decoration than 'fine art', which is what I'm interested in producing.
"This is something that differs from the perspective in Italy, where fine art has been displayed on walls and roof interiors for centuries."
In The Mountain, three Kiwi pre-teens try to scale Taranaki on Aotearoa's North Island, in a coming-of-age in the vein of Stand by Me or Storm Boy.(Supplied: Madman Entertainment)
Rachel House has been saying no to directing feature films for decades.
As one of New Zealand's most recognisable actors — known for stealing scenes in Thor: Ragnarok, Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Heartbreak High, among others — she would frequently receive scripts with an invitation to direct.
But when she first read The Mountain, she felt a pull from what immediately struck her in its absence: The titular mountain was unnamed, non-descript.
"When I read the script, I was confused as to where we were in the world," she tells ABC Entertainment.
"As Māori, we see mountains as living ancestors, as part of our genealogy. I thought it was a wonderful gift that [writer] Tom Furniss gave me because it gave me the ability to rework the script and be inclusive of our worldview — and [show] why it felt so strange to me not to have a mountain named."
While Rachel House is a prolific, celebrated theatre director and has also directed three short films, The Mountain is her feature-length directorial debut.(Supplied: Mataara Stokes)
In House's reworked script, The Mountain is Taranaki, located in Aotearoa's North Island — a mountain that House is connected to through her whakapapa — meaning genealogy — along with two of the eight surrounding iwi, or Māori tribes.
And where the original draft saw three young boys set out on an adventure to scale a mountain, House's revised version follows Sam, a young Māori girl (newcomer Elizabeth Atkinson) with cancer who plots a daring escape from hospital to visit Taranaki in the hopes it will heal her.
"Rather than these three little boys wanting to go and conquer a mountain — a common idea for humanity — I thought, 'what a wonderful Indigenous perspective to share,'" she explains.
"It's a wonderful thing to connect with a mountain, rather than conquer it."
A family film
Inspired by two of House's favourite films — Storm Boy (1976) and Stand By Me (1986) — The Mountain is an adventure film, as Sam is joined by two other pre-teen misfits as they scale Taranaki, avoiding the search party trailing behind.
"I call it a family film," says House.
"All ages can enjoy it. It's one of those films you take your kids to and you end up having a really great time as well."
Sam's new friends include Mallory (Reuben Francis), who has just moved to Taranaki following his parents' divorce, and Bronco (Terence Daniel), a precocious Māori boy who runs away from home to teach his always-working dad a lesson.
In a statement, Terence Daniel, who plays Bronco, said “This film is amazing. It's the best movie I have made. The only one."(Supplied: Madman Entertainment)
Proud of his culture, Bronco is inspirational for Sam, who is eager to connect to her heritage but lacks any knowledge beyond what she's read online after growing up with her Pākehā (non-Māori New Zealander) mother, and no father.
Just like House's reference films, The Mountain deftly touches upon heavy topics but is filled with laughter and light, reminiscent of executive producer Taika Waititi's coming-of-age comedies Boy and Hunt for the Wilderpeople, which House stars in.
House credits a lot of that whimsy to the lead trio, disagreeing entirely with the adage that filmmakers should never work with children or animals. In fact, she has worked as a children's acting coach on multiple productions by Waititi and Jane Campion.
The Mountain opens with Sam's daring escape, set to spy music. She soon picks up Mallory and Bronco along the way.(Supplied: Madman Entertainment)
"[They bring] joy, openness, possibility, curiosity," she says.
"It's a joy to be around all of those qualities. And I'm a big kid, it would be foolish of me to pretend otherwise."
House hopes the film inspires all audiences, big and small, to reconsider their relationship to the natural world.
"Nature is inclusive, it's there for all of us," she says.
"That beautiful Indigenous knowledge, which is sort of global, speaks to that. It speaks to nature being there for all of us, and the importance of us all to be guardians."
An informed approach to filmmaking
The reverence this film holds for Taranaki is evident in House's gorgeous, tender shots of its forests, but it's signposted in the opening credits too — Taranaki is credited as an actor, playing themselves.
For House, the top billing was a no-brainer.
"We bow down to our mountains," she says.
"There's a well-known whakataukī (proverb) that you should bow down to a worthy, lofty mountain. We were incredibly fortunate and lucky to even be able to film in and around that mountain because, rightly so, our mountain is protected."
In 2023, Taranaki and the other peaks in the surrounding national parks were enshrined with legal personhood under the joint name of Te Kāhui Tupua by the New Zealand government. They are Aotearoa's third geographic feature to be granted the same legal rights as people, readdressing their confiscation by British settlers.
While usually covered by clouds, Mount Taranaki was unusually clear during the filming of The Mountain, requiring visual effects studio Wētā FX to add in clouds were necessary.(Supplied: Madman Entertainment)
A body called Te Tōpuni Kōkōrangi is the mountain's face and voice, comprised of four Crown-appointed members and four from the Ngā iwi o Taranaki collective, who represent the eight tribes related to Taranaki. This lengthy process was underway while House was undergoing extensive consultation with iwi representatives for the film.
"It was because I was connected and related to Taranaki that we were able to [make the film]. But we did also have to ask permission of all eight tribes as well. We like to talk things through thoroughly as people and as a community. So, it took a long time," she says.
"It was probably quite annoying that we were going 'Can we make this little film?', in comparison to what they were fighting for," she laughs.
Another unconventional opening credit might stand out to viewers. Rather than "co-written, co-produced and directed by", House's name appears under the words "a film made by heaps of people including Rachel House".
"When I read a film 'by' one person, I'm like, 'How'd you make the film then?' Heaps of people had to join in. It's imperative, of course, that one person steers the ship, but we'd be nothing without all of those incredible heads," she says.
"I've gotten a bit of flack for it — that it feels like I'm being too modest. But I would argue that all films are made collaboratively, and I think it's just respectful to be inclusive of that."
The trio's parents trail behind them throughout the film, played by Kiwi actors Byron Coll, Troy Kingi and Fern Sutherland (not pictured).(Supplied: Madman Entertainment)
As for the future, House is eager to continue directing alongside acting, with roles in global blockbusters, like Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire or Moana, hopefully offering stability to return home.
"Last year, I got to go and make some quick money here and there doing acting stuff, otherwise I wouldn't have survived financially," she says.
"You make better money outside of Aotearoa, or international productions within Aotearoa. It's the pay-off system."
But she is certain that she wants to direct more things in Aotearoa.
"I want to keep telling our stories, but I also want to keep telling diverse stories. I don't want it just to be one thing. I like inclusivity."
