Neighbours’ Toadie star Ryan Moloney praises ‘incredibly inspirational’ co-stars ahead of emotional exit
Neighbours legend Ryan Moloney surprised fans across the world earlier this year when he announced he’d be leaving the cult Australian soap after almost thirty years as Toadie Rebecchi.
He’s one of the Amazon Freevee soap’s most familiar names, joining as a troublesome teenager back in 1995 and remaining as a firm fixture for literally thousands of episodes following.
Actor Ryan Moloney has grown up on the show – by his own admission he’s spent more of his life as Toadie than he has himself – but it was some years ago that he decided it was time to move on.
Those plans were soon halted when British broadcaster Channel 5 suddenly cut funding, and the show was axed in 2022. Ryan realised it was best if he stayed on to be part of television history in the ‘finale’ episode which saw Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan reprise their roles for the first time since the late 80s.
Fast forward four months and he was one of the faces announcing that streaming giant Amazon Freevee were launching a revival. After agreeing to sign on the dotted line for the ‘new chapter’, bosses decided to hand him a year-long contract to finally fulfil his desires to move on.
Ahead of a nationwide UK tour coined ‘Toad on the Road’ (clever, ay?) which kicks off tonight, and plans to spend more time renovating his unusually-named farmland in Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, Metro.co.uk caught up with Ryan to discuss his future, and the best bits of Great Britain.
Who has been the most inspirational person in your life?
Right now I’m gonna lead with two people I actually worked with – Shiv [Palekar, who plays Haz Devkar] and Georgie [Stone, Mackenzie Hargreaves], I think they’re both incredibly inspirational.
Shiv because of the crap that he’s had to go to in order to get an Australian visa and stay in the country as an immigrant. His story is just amazing, it’s phenominal the stuff that was happened to him.
Georgie is a very impressive humanbeing. Talking to parliament [about trans rights for children] at age 15 or 13, and now she goes off and has big talks in front of thousands of people.
It wasn’t your decision to leave Neighbours. How did that come about?
When Neighbours came back, we’d got a 12 month option [on the] contract, and I guess that was sort of their plan to kind of wind up Toadie in a way.
When Neighbours wrapped up the first time from Channel 5, I was thinking ‘I’d like to leave, but I think it’s finishing so I’d like to be there for the end of the show.’
