Neighbours' original Scott Robinson before Jason Donovan - from rival role to tragedy
12.08.2023 - 06:37
/ ok.co.uk
It could be an apparently-simple pub quiz question: who played Scott Robinson in Aussie TV soap Neighbours? Surely the answer is surely blindingly obvious – Jason Donovan. But anyone who thought this was the case would actually be wrong. For back when Neighbours first began on TV in March 1985, the character was played by a different actor, called Darius Perkins.
He was one of the original cast members alongside actors including Paul Keane, who played Des, and Elaine Smith (Daphne). It should hardly be a huge shock that producers might choose to change an actor playing a character. Or, for that matter, that nobody in the soaps ever seems to notice when it happens.
It happened three times to Jason's on-screen sister Lucy Robinson, first played by Kylie Flinker, followed by Sasha Close and then Melissa Bell. And, far more recently, the role of EastEnders' Ben Mitchell has been played by six actors, including Max Bowden, since 2019. So it's Jason who the public readily remembers as blond mullet-haired, blue-eyed Scott in the late 80s and early 90s – with epic storylines including his on-screen wedding to TV fiancée Charlene Mitchell (Kylie Minogue), which was watched by an audience of 20 million in the UK.
Jason went on to win two coveted Australian TV Logie Awards for the show, launched a pop career and starred in musical theatre. Things worked out a little differently for Darius, who was first cast as Scott at the age of 20, following a string of previous Australian TV appearances. His success was short-lived, as less than a year later the soap's producers soon decided to swap Darius for Jason, reportedly to increase the character's appeal.
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