Neighbours actress Anne Charleston, who portrayed Madge Bishop in the much-loved series consistently from 1986 until 2001, and on/off until 2022, has revealed she was so disheartened by the transformation of her character’s persona that it resulted in a lost lawsuit, costing thousands.
The soap star was extremely unimpressed with how her character changed, with it causing her to ditch Ramsay Street in the early 2000s with plans to never return.
While she did return to the show, Anne wasn’t shy about sharing her annoyance over the soap reaching its lowest point with a particular episode. Back in 2002, she didn’t hold back, expressing: “Madge became a joke.”
“I’d made her into a feisty firebrand, but bit by bit the writers dismantled her. They tried to change her into a b***h. I argued with them, so they turned her into a victim. Madge had an aneurysm – an enlarged artery. Then she went blind. Then the coffee shop was broken into and she had post traumatic stress disorder… all in just a few weeks.”
During this period, Anne picked up a role in the comedy series Dossa and Joe, despite her co-star Ian Smith’s apprehension that she may struggle to land gigs beyond Ramsay Street. In a chat with The Mirror, she opened up saying: “It’s such a relief to get away from Madge. Ian Smith tried to persuade me to stay in Neighbours. He has this attitude that at our age we can’t expect to find other work. He thought I was mad for going. Well, I’ve proved him wrong.”, reports the Daily Star.
Madge was written out of the show after a cancer storyline in 2001, but made a comeback in 2015 as a figment of Harold’s imagination, and again in 2022 for the series finale in a similar manner.
Anne, who also had a stint on Emmerdale as Lily Butterfield from 2006 to 2009, even took legal action against the News of the World paper when they overstepped with a soap sex scene story. The tabloid had superimposed images of Anne and her co-star Ian Smith’s faces onto models in explicit poses, which she was furious about, calling it defamatory.
However, the duo lost the case, and were left with a hefty £45,000 legal bill. This debt meant that when Anne was invited back to Neighbours as a figment of imagination, she had ‘no choice’ but to return in order to get ‘back on her feet’.
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