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New gay character for Neighbours

Spoiler: Actor Bobby Morley will play a new gay character on Ramsay Street.

Spoiler: Neighbours’ gay youth Chris Pappas (James Mason) will finally get a romantic interest when actor Bobby Morley joins the TEN soap.

The former Home and Away and The Strip actor will play male nurse Aidan Foster who becomes a couple with Pappas.

The role is currently set for a six month stint, but could be extended.

“To be true to the Chris character, now he is a regular in storylines, we knew at some stage he needed to meet someone,” Neighbours executive producer Susan Bower told the Sunday Herald Sun.

“How it unfolds, all will be revealed, however I think viewers will find the story compelling.”

Given romantic storylines go hand-in-hand with Erinsborough youth, it’s certainly been a long time coming for Mason’s character, who came out last August.

42 Responses

  1. I would love to be a boyfriend of somebody like Chris. I think he is just an awesome young gay guy!

    He’s character is very sensitive to others he’s also quite smart and very hot looking. I could get lost in his eyes very quickly.

  2. Mate, I think you’re pretty much spot on with the list of gay characters on Neighbours, but Donna is possibly arguable. She was definately meant to be bisexual at the start, but they kind of swept it under the rug after that. It was never really mentioned again and she only ever dated men.
    I could be wrong, but think even the kiss with Sunny was non-sexual.

    I’m thinking maybe they got cold feet, like what happened with Home and Away.

  3. OK, I will give Neighbours another go … sadly, every time they have introduved an actor I like or even the various Doctor Who references it has not succeeded in holding my attention … let’s see if they treat this story line well enough to keep me watching!
    As for H&A … they need to bite the bullet and have a couple of “real” gay characters in there … there is often scenes where there is obvious “sexual tension” between some of the straight guys, particularly involving Xavier, but that is more of a joke …

  4. I’d say that Gino was out because all the other characters knew and it was always implied that that he was gay, even though it was never actually said. There was also Pepper Steiger’s mum Chris, who was living with her partner Carol.

  5. Neighbours has been criticised in the past for creating lesbian relationships that didn’t lead to any character development and were written solely to boost ratings. They only did it twice but both instances generated a lot of controversy. I think people forget the fact it’s a bloody soap opera and as long as they don’t pretend it’s a serious plot technique – like in a lot of American shows – it’s all well and good for them to exploit the public fascination with two women locking lips.

    The idea of writing a lesbian character into a show, having them involved in a fling with one of main female characters, then taking them back out of the show in the space of a few episodes is very much an American thing. It has been used in dozens of shows and is a way of paying homage to groundbreaking 90’s drama – shows like Roseanne and Party of Five – that explored homosexual themes and made a point of showing the physical side of lesbian relationships.

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesbian_kiss_episode

  6. Gino Esposito was “out” on Neighbours. While they never actually said he was it was always alluded to the fact that he was. At one stage he had a boyfriend called Aaron who was a mechanic at the garage with Steph Scully and they moved in together. It may have seemed like Gino wasn’t out because in true Neighbours over-the-top self-censorship, nobody ever seemed to actually say the words “gay” when they were talking about him. They also said things like his “special friend” rather than “boyfriend” when talking about Aaron.

  7. Considering Neigbours is written in a collaboration by the character Becky from Glee, the old lady from Titanic, my 8th grade Christian Education teacher who cried when a kid mimed washing his hands with soap in a suggestive manner and discarded one page screenplays by highschool drama students I can only imagine this will be portrayed in the most offensively clumsy way possible which will make young gay guys like myself homophobic.
    Still props to them for having a go, even if only to f*** it up.

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