40 years ago, the writer’s room for A Country Practice was faced with a dilemma.
It was 1985, the hit Australian show was in its fifth season… and the series’s biggest star wanted to leave.
So how do you kill off Molly Jones, who, at the time, was one of the nation’s favorite characters?
Over 14 episodes, Molly Jones’ death was carefully plotted out before she died from leukemia, leaving her on-screen husband, Brendan, widowed.
What many didn’t know was that Shane Withington and Anne Tenney, who played Brendan and Molly on-screen, were a real-life couple, and now, the married actors are reflecting on one of Australia’s most iconic and devastating storylines forty years later.
“They didn’t know. We kept it very quiet,” Tenney recently told ABC’s 7.30 about the on-screen couple’s real-life love story.
“That was our business, not theirs,” Withington added. “We didn’t do any media on it, even though they really tried with people up trees and following us around overseas.”
“We kept it under our hats, no one really knew,” he previously told Starts at 60.
“We kept it a secret for years, we didn’t want to cheapen our relationship by doing a magazine cover saying ‘we found love on a soap opera’! We valued our relationship more than that, it’s a private thing and we’ve kept it that way ever since.”
Their on-screen daughter, Emily Nicol, previously admitted that she was “oblivious” to the relationship when she was working on the show, despite the former child actor telling New Idea that Tenney and Withington became like parents to her.
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“I had names for them on set – ‘Brendaddy’ and ‘Mollymum’ – so that says a lot about our bond.”
The couple are currently looking back at their time in Wandin Valley as Georgie Parker, who played Lucy Gardner in later seasons of A Country Practice, hits the stage in a new play marking the anniversary of Molly’s departure.
How To Plot A Hit In Two Days is set inside the writer’s room as they draft Molly’s final season.
So why did Tenney decide to leave the show, which found fans across the globe, including the likes of David Bowie and Iggy Pop?
“I really wanted to leave. I really needed to leave. I wanted to move on,” Tenney told ABC. She later landed the role of matriarch Sal Kerrigan in the comedy hit The Castle.
Withington remained on A Country Practice for another year before departing and currently stars as John Palmer on Home and Away, but to this day many fans don’t realise the pair are a couple in real life.
“When we go to country towns, it’s like a royal visit,” Withington explained, before admitting that Tenney tries her best to keep her head down.
“Sometimes I can be anonymous, but then Shane says, “Oh, Molly’s over there,'” she said.
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