Home and Away fans aren’t happy with Heather Fraser, played by Sofia Nolan, and her storyline is heating up this week.
Heather is Marilyn Chambers’ (Emily Symons) illegitimate daughter, who Marilyn adopted out against her will years ago.
This week, the sassy blonde is getting back at Marilyn by holding a lavish high tea with a twist.
Heather intends to make her mother pay for abandoning her by luring Marilyn, Alf Stewart (Ray Meagher), Leah Patterson (Ada Nicodemou), Roo Stewart (Georgie Parker), and Irene Roberts (Lynne McGranger) to a rural spot.
When discussing her time in Summer Bay with Yahoo Lifestyle, Sofia is careful to point out that she doesn’t consider Heather to be purely “a villain.
” Every novel, in her opinion, requires a villain because, “I frequently think the villain is the best character.” “But Heather is not the villain, at least not in my perspective; perhaps not in the judgement of the viewers.
She then continues, “I think she is a victim of her own dismay,” saying that Heather’s acts “come from a place of misdirected love.” “This is a significant assertion. In reference to Heather’s “evil” High Tea scheme, she claims that it is a sign of desperation on her part.
“Humans can lose control and lead with emotion. And leading with emotion obviously leads to doing really, really silly things.”
The actress says that Heather feels like she’s ‘not heard’ and ‘not cared about’ by her birth mother, and warns viewers to ‘buckle up’.
‘They hate her’
The Sofia’s family has been avid viewers of Home and Away for many years, and Sofia’s nanny Gail even considers herself a “super fan.”
Even though they watch the show every night, her family isn’t quite sold on Sofia’s persona.
“They both adore and despise her, which is kind of what we wanted. Everyone in my family feels somewhat guilty about disliking Heather,” she chuckles.
When everyone seems to dislike her, I simultaneously think, “Okay, well that’s OK, I suppose I did the screenplay justice then.”
Hundreds of comments on how much Heather should be fired have been posted on social media by Summer Bay fans over the previous two weeks.
Everyone forewarned me, saying, “You’re likely to receive a lot of harsh messages, folks.
The Newcastle-based actress claims she doesn’t take things personally and that she was informed about the “cult following” of the serial opera before her plot aired.
Everyone warned her, she recalls, saying things like, “You’re probably going to get a lot of harsh messages, people are really going to dislike her.”
The actress claims that she was taken aback by how ‘protective’ Marilyn’s fan group was, given that she was originally introduced to Summer Bay in 1989.
They were quite upset by the fact that I was harming their Maz. She acknowledges, “I occasionally read the comments and think, ‘Ooh, goodness gosh, they really don’t like [Heather]’.
‘Shaking in my boots’
The young actress recalls “shivering in her boots” before the first day because she was “nervous” to meet the long-term cast members.
She admits that she had a childhood photo of Ray Meagher and had even seen his wax replica at Madame Tussauds, bringing the story full circle.
The celebrity was a fan of Emily Symons and Georgie Parker and grew up watching them on Play School.
I spent a lot of time with Emily and Georgie [on set], and they both served as my mentors throughout the entire process. Both of them are stunning women on the inside and out. I was quite fortunate to be in terrific hands there, she beams.
The hardest part about playing such an unlikeable character were the situations she found herself in with the Aussie icons.
“I had no idea what the story was, all I knew that this was Marilyn’s long lost daughter and I thought, ‘that’s amazing!’,” she says.
“I think the hardest part honestly was being really mean to Emily, Georgie, Ray and to everybody who attends this whole [High Tea] situation.”
Both Emily and Ada have echoed their support for Sofia in their past interviews with Yahoo Lifestyle.
After Heather and Leah clashed onscreen, Ada said that she had fun filming their storyline.
“I loved working with Sofia, she is such a great actress, loves what she does and is very good. Her threatening scenes with Leah were very chilling. She’s scary,” Ada said.
Emily also described Sofia as ‘a delight’, adding that the star is ‘a great little actor’.
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