Neighbours' Terese and Toadie: 'We worked hard to make love authentic'

At the end of the first episode it was revealed that Terese is actually marrying Toadie, not Paul, and that in the two-year gap Toadie must have also got divorced from Melanie.

However, Moloney and Elmaloglou have been clear while speaking exclusively with RadioTimes.com that the huge twist isn't just for the sake of a shock - they also worked hard to make sure their on-screen relationship was "authentic".

Moloney said: "As soon as we found out, it's like, 'Okay, all right. How do we make this work? What's the story dynamics? What's the character dynamics? What's the background to how these two have gotten together?'

"Because it was very, very important for us to have it not be a gimmick, that people actually buy it and they go, 'Oh, yeah, of course, they make sense being together.'"

He continued: "Because we've got the shock factor first up. It's the thing that people see, it's like, 'Oh, Gee, I never saw that coming.'

"But from that point on, it's got to be like, 'Well, of course that happens, and now we want to know why and how.' It's pretty exciting to be able to create that and give the audience that kind of journey as well."

Read more:

• Neighbours' Varga-Murphys and Rodwells clash in explosive drama
• Neighbours' Alan Fletcher read "the best script ever" in new series

Meanwhile, when asked how they think the twist will go down with the fans, Elmaloglou said that she doesn't think "it's gonna go down too well at first".

She revealed that she had had a dream where she was "confronted with a whole lot of fans of the show and they were really upset."

However, she added: "We've worked quite hard at making it, as Ryan said, real and authentic. These two people are genuinely in love with each other and have got together in a beautiful way and so forth."

Neighbours returns on Amazon Freevee on 18th September 2023. Check out more of our Soaps coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on.

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