EXCLUSIVE: From thief to villain, Home and Away’s Bridie Carter reflects on her career

Bridie Carter likes to keep something from every TV show she’s worked on. On the verandah of her farm near Byron Bay, she has two chairs from the series that was her first ”big break”, Above The Law. And, of course, she still has the hat and riding boots she wore when she played Tess in McLeod’s Daughters.

”I’ll always hang onto them,” she tells TV WEEK from her farm.

”They’re looking pretty decrepit, I must say, but I still wear them both.”

Bridie has also kept every copy of TV WEEK with her on the cover.

”They’re in a box in a container shed on my farm,” she says. ”I’ve got a lot of memorabilia. It’s just such lovely stuff to look back upon.”

Bridie, 52, grew up in a ”really creative family” in Melbourne, with a mother who was a gallery director. A big fan of Aussie TV dramas, Bridie always knew she wanted to act, and started going to drama classes at the age of six.

”When I was a little girl, A Country Practice was massive for me… and I remember begging to stay up to watch shows like Prisoner,” she says.

After scoring a few TV commercials, including an Omo ad, she landed her first speaking role, in Neighbours.

”I stole someone’s watch!” she remembers. ”I didn’t have a lot of lines – I was 18 and terrified.”

Years later, after having studied at NIDA, Bridie was cast in Above The Law as Senior Constable Debbie Curtis. The drama series, about an inner-city apartment block with a police station on the ground floor, also starred Nicholas Bishop and Kristy Wright. Bridie says it was a ”massive shoc” when it was axed.

”I think we were in our 10th month of shooting, and we turned up for our read-through for our next episode, and they said, ‘Go home, guys – this show’s got the chop.”’

Feeling ”a bit lost”, Bridie went on a trip to the US, where she fell in love with the ”health food and yoga” scene in Los Angeles.

”I stayed way too long, maxed out all my credit cards, came home to my rented little flat in Clovelly [in Sydney] where the windows didn’t close properly… I didn’t know how I was going to pay my rent,” she recalls.

”Then I got a call from my agent, saying, ‘Oh, there’s this show. It’s in Adelaide and it’s about girls and horses.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, right, OK.”’

That show was McLeod’s Daughters and it would change Bridie’s life. At the auditions, she remembers series creator Posie Graeme-Evans asking her which role she liked, country girl Claire McLeod or her half-sister Tess.

”I said, ‘Look, both, probably, but my heart’s probably with Tess.’ I loved the journey of Tess, a city girl coming to the country.”

Lisa Chappell was cast as Claire, and then Bridie and Lisa were sent off to horse camp together before shooting began.

”It was her and I in a caravan in the middle of nowhere, going, ‘Where the hell are we and what are we doing?’ But we had each other.”

When McLeod’s premiered in August 2001, it was obvious from the ratings that the show was a hit. But because Bridie and Lisa were filming on a farm north of Adelaide, ”working our butts off the whole year,” they didn’t realise just how much of a hit it was until the following year’s TV WEEK Logie Awards.

”Lise and I went together, in the limo, and just the response of fans outside… That first Logies was like, ‘Oh my goodness me – people love this!’ That was pretty exciting, and lovely to know what we were doing really meant something to people.”

Bridie’s first TV WEEK cover, with Myles Pollard, who played Nick, was another ”amazing” moment for her.

”I think actors have a lot of self-doubts. Something like that is a positive response to the work you’re doing. It’s like, ‘OK, I’m on the right track.”’

Lisa and Bridie starred together for three seasons. Bridie admits there was friction at times – ”we’re both really strong women and we’re really different” – but that they felt a ”fierce sisterly protection” for each other.

”Even during those hard times on McLeod’s, or after, [it’s] ‘Don’t say a bad word about her because I’ll kill you!”’ she says with a laugh.

Nearly two decades down the track, Bridie still gets emotional talking about the scene where Claire dies going over the cliff, after making sure baby Charlotte is safe.

”There were points where the whole crew, was crying,” she says. ”The director just let me go. It was very raw.”

Three seasons later, Bridie made the decision to leave the show herself. By then she’d married fashion designer Michael Wilson and they’d welcomed baby Otis. Bridie went back to McLeod’s when Otis was not much more than a month old. Michael and his mother would both come on set with Otis so Bridie could breastfeed him.

”It was hard,” she reveals, ”and ultimately, that’s one of the main reasons I left when Otis was nearly one because it was just too much. In hindsight, I should have had a proper maternity leave.”

Bridie, who has a second son, Toby, declares she’s a ”fierce, hands-on mother.”

”I didn’t leave Otis overnight until he was four – he came on every job with me. Because I lost my mother when I was so young, my mothering is a massive part of me.”

The time Bridie and Michael spent on the farm where McLeod’s was filmed inspired them to buy their own farm. It was a massive lifestyle change for both of them, and Bridie still marvels at it.

”When we’re fixing fences, I still go, ‘Oh my God, this is so weird. I feel like I’m in a storyline!”’

Although McLeod’s finished in 2009, Bridie found herself on the cover of TV WEEK for the series again in 2019, when the cast reunited for a special event.

”That blew me away,” she recalls.

”TV WEEK has always been so supportive of McLeod’s. We did the story, which was super-exciting, but the fact that we got the cover and that I was on it… For me, it was a testament to the longevity and the reality of the show’s success, not only then, but right now.”

Of course, Bridie has appeared in plenty of other TV shows since. She’s competed in Dancing With The Stars twice (and won once), co-starred with Erik Thomson in the comedy-drama 800 Words, and played the evil Susie McAllister in Home And Away.

For Bridie, being offered the role of Susie not long after COVID hit was ”like a miracle”. It was also a thrill to have the opportunity to act opposite Shane Withington, who she’d loved watching as Brendan Jones on A Country Practice all those years earlier.

”Pretty phenomenal stuff!” she says.

While on the Summer Bay set, Bridie told Shane how much A Country Practice had meant to her, just as so many people have told her how much McLeod’s has meant to them.

”I get people giving me a hug, holding my hand, and looking deeply into my eyes. I get it, because that show stepped into people’s hearts fully,” she says.

Bridie loved her stint on Home And Away with Shane and the ”gorgeous” Lynne McGranger, who plays Irene, and would be more than happy to return, despite Susie being dead.

“Lynne, Shane, and I were all trying to make up ways Susie could come back because we had the best time. ‘It’s a soap opera – people come back from the dead! She has a twin sister!”’

She’d also love the chance to play Tess McLeod again one day.

”Tess will always be within me,” she says. ”I hope one day she gets to come out again. We’ll see. But she’ll always be a part of me, until the day I die.”