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Interviews > Eliza Taylor-Cotter

SPOILER WARNING: This interview contains spoilers for Australian and UK viewers. To read a spoiler-free version, click here.

Last month, Paul Gray spoke to Eliza Taylor-Cotter (Janae), where she was performing in the town's 07/08 pantomime, Snow White.

So have you enjoyed your time at the Snow White panto in Weymouth so far?
I’ve really loved it. Weymouth is beautiful and we’ve got a great cast of people. There have been no fights or anything – we’re all getting on really well! We spend most of our time in each other’s houses so it’s really fun.

Have you had a chance to explore the area around Weymouth?
I have a little bit. I haven’t had the chance to venture out too much. I’m spending most of my time here at the theatre or at home or at the cast’s houses just chilling out and watching DVDs and stuff. Once you finish a performance all you want to do is eat some food and go to bed. So I haven’t really had an explore, but I’ll get to do that when we finish the run.

So how long are you actually in the UK?
This panto goes up to the 6th January ‘08. I leave the UK a couple of weeks after that (to go back to Australia), so I’ll have a chance just to hang out and not do a whole lot.

It must be so busy for you at the moment, especially as you are currently doing two shows per day…
Yeah, and we had 6 days straight of rehearsals before the run started. It’s really tough work, but it’s also really rewarding when it all comes together. It’s good fun.

How much does this routine compare with your schedule on Neighbours?
On Neighbours it can really vary, depending on what scenes you’re in, what sets are in and all that stuff. I tend to do between 10 and 12 hours on Neighbours. Here in Weymouth we’ve been doing 10 hour rehearsals every day or if we’ve got performances on we’ll be here from about 11am till 9ish. TV and stage are just so many worlds apart. I’ve never done musical theatre before. Well, I’ve never even been on stage before! I’ve just grown up in front of the camera so it’s been a very different experience for me. But that’s why I wanted to do it – I’d been at Neighbours for 3 years and I thought “ok, this is getting kinda boring and repetitive” so I felt I needed to challenge myself.

You’ve recently finished filming Neighbours. It seems like several of members of the cast are moving at the moment – was missing some of your mates one of the reasons you decided to leave the show?
Yeah, absolutely. It can be really difficult when you build really close bonds with people. Obviously you’re working 5 days a week together, 12 hours a day and then you’ve got your appearances on the weekend – where you’ve got to fly to Sydney and Queensland to do shopping centres signings and stuff. So obviously you’re going to form really close bonds with people and when they leave it’s a bit of a shock.

Why did your on-screen family all leave before your character Janae?
Just because my character had moved on and joined up with another family (Ned Parker and his son Mickey). With the Timmins family, we weren’t sure how people were going to react to them. It turned out that they were the sort of family that you either loved or hated. We got a lot of great feedback, so we stayed a lot longer than we thought we would. It was a really good run I think. It was good fun especially working with Nell Feeney (who played Janae’s mother Janelle Timmins). I loved working with all of the actors in my on-screen family and it was really sad to see them go, which was part of the reason that I decided to leave. Neighbours is just a completely different place now and there are a lot of new people – it just didn’t feel like the family that I joined when I started three years ago.