Former Home and Away star Lynne McGranger has reflected on her “struggle” on the set of the show in the early days of her career.
McGranger played Irene Roberts on Home and Away for 33 years before her departure in March 2025.
In a new interview for the Cracking On podcast, the TV icon told former co-stars Sam Frost and Sarah Roberts she “really struggled” to fit in during her first few years on the show.
“I really did struggle to fit in because there was this assumption I knew what I was doing, and I didn’t have a clue,” she told her former castmates.
“I felt like I didn’t fit in for quite a while.”
Frost, who rose to fame on The Bachelor Australia before making her acting debut as Jasmine Delaney on Home and Away, shared her own experiences and the pressure she felt.
“When I started I wasn’t an actor and I had a lot of pressure on me,” Frost said.
“It was awful, it was awful…
“It’s really hard when you’re in an environment with established actors and I think I was chasing my tail the whole time I was there, trying to prove that I was able to do it,” she added.
McGranger even shared that there was a time she felt like she was “bullied” on the set of the show, and the one storyline that impacted her deeply, after she suffered a miscarriage during her second pregnancy.
McGranger has one daughter, Clancy, with her partner Paul McWaters.
The actress recalled the time she had to portray her on-screen character’s pregnancy and birth, while grieving her own loss.
“Unfortunately, I lost the baby at 16 weeks and that was kind of traumatic enough as it was,” she said.
“Obviously it was awful, and I had to go in for a D&C and went back to work on the Monday and, in all fairness, the producers did come and I talked to them and they said ‘do you want us to write in to change it?’ she explained.
“What are you going to do? Write in a miscarriage? It was hard. It was harder than I thought it would be,” she admitted.
“I decided that it was easier to strap on the bump – we’ve all done that – and go ahead with the storyline, and give birth.”
She then went on to explain the most painful part of shooting the scene.
“Where it really hit home for me, where I really lost it in studio, what I had to do as Irene is go and get the ultrasound, and come back with the photos,” she said.
“That was really hard. That was the hardest thing, and it caught me by surprise because I thought I’d grieved at home with Clancy and Paul.
“That really hurt.”
Image: Instagram
