When James Stewart arrived at Palm Beach in 2016 to shoot his first scenes for Home and Away, he assumed the job would only last a short time. Instead, it became one of the biggest chapters of his life.
Over the past 10 years, the long-running drama has delivered far more than he expected. Along with success and close friendships, the role also brought security and support for his daughter, Scout.
“What an incredible decade it’s been,” James, 50, told TV WEEK. “My daughter and I often go back through photos on my phone – which have become sort of an archive of history for people now – and we arrived in Sydney when Scout was only four.”
At the time, his main focus was Scout, his daughter with actress Jessica Marais. Taking on the role came with the challenge of balancing work and parenthood, but it also offered something he badly needed.
“Being a single father was scary so, when I was offered this job, I thought, ‘Okay. Here’s something I can sink my teeth into and sign for three years’, which enabled some stability. I put my daughter through school and had a steady income. What started happening, unknowingly, to me was that I began to build a family.”
James joined the series as Justin Morgan, a fiercely protective older brother whose arrival in Summer Bay quickly made an impression, especially during his early clash with local bad boy Ash, played by George Mason. But Australian audiences had already come to know him well from Packed to the Rafters, where he played Jake Barton from 2009 to 2013.
That role earned him a TV WEEK Logie nomination for Best New Talent in 2010 and gave him a strong fan following before he even stepped into Summer Bay. Even so, he admitted the attention brought pressure.
“You’re always in an audition, even when you’re in a job, so you want the character to be attractive enough to the audience and producers that they keep you on,” he says. “I felt some pressure, but it just makes me study and work harder to get it right.”
After watching Erik Thomson and Rebecca Gibney, whom he described as “people I admire greatly”, lead the cast on Packed to the Rafters, James felt prepared to take on a central role again alongside his on-screen Home and Away siblings, played by Penny McNamee, Jackson Heywood, Orpheus Pledger and Olivia Deeble.
“You can’t do it alone, though,” he says. “I came in with the Morgan family, so we all led the storyline at one time or another. It felt like teamwork.”
He believes that spirit has always been central to the show’s popularity.
“Aside from the lighthouse or bikini bodies running out of the water, which are synonymous with the show, Home and Away has always been about relationships. People like seeing those things just as much as they enjoy watching Alf having a cuppa and a chat.”
Now the only Morgan sibling left in the series, James has seen Justin evolve into a very different character. Without his family around him, Justin has had to work out who he is on his own while dealing with near-death experiences, addictions and rocky romances.
But his most fitting love story has been with Leah, played by his real-life fiancée Ada Nicodemou. For James, their on-screen wedding stands out as his favourite moment.
“The Justin and Leah wedding was a really personal moment for me,” he says. “We grew up in the shadow of Scott and Charlene getting married on Neighbours so that was our prototype. I called my brother who’s a musician and he got a friend’s song to play and sing.
“The cast and crew all went away together. It was a great time. And I loved watching Justin, Leah and Theo [Matt Evans] became a family.”
As for whether he could stay in Summer Bay for another decade, James is not ruling it out.
“When I look back at everything that’s happened, I really do love this place,” he says of the show. “I spend more time with these people than my actual family, and I’ve thought about that [staying on] for quite a while…I have to say, ‘Watch this space’… But if they offer me another contract, I think I’ll be staying.”
