“Part of me is nervous… I want to make it good.”
When Stephen Peacocke first swaggered onto the Home And Away set in 2011 as Brax, the leader of the infamous River Boys, he became a household name almost overnight.
Now, nearly a decade after leaving the long-running series, the actor is returning to the world of Summer Bay – older, wiser and with an international resume that cements his star quality.
But, for Stephen, the decision to keep working at home in Australia has been nothing but rewarding.
“I’ve been lucky to have had 10 years of really good work,” Stephen, 43, tells TV WEEK. “I don’t take for granted how fortunate I am to work in this industry, in this country – and to have worked overseas on some great things, too.”
After wrapping up on the show in 2016, the Dubbo-born star headed to the US with actor wife Bridgette Sneddon, where he found work reasonably fast.
“We based ourselves overseas after I finished Home And Away. I’d gone from job to job over there and we got the green card, and then we came back to Australia and COVID hit,” he recalls.
“By some extraordinarily fortunate circumstances I got Five Bedrooms, RFDS and The Newsreader, and they all turned into series, so we’ve never gone back. I’ve had a very, very fortunate run.”
For the past three years Stephen has kept that run and anchored RFDS as flight nurse Pete Emerson, a character who mirrors the resilience and dry humour of the outback blokes he grew up with in Dubbo, NSW.
“The writing just gets better and better,” he says of the award-winning series. “There’s nothing on that show that we’ve done that hasn’t happened. The more outrageous you think it is, the more likely it is to have happened.”
Season three of RFDS pushes Pete to the limit, including a nail-biting emergency plane landing that Stephen jokes he got his pilot licence for.
“I’m that much of a method actor,” he laughs. “No, I thought I’d put myself in Pete’s shoes and get the bare basics a couple weeks before we shot the episode, and then try to memorise it. I knew it was going to be a ripper episode.”
Later this year Stephen will revisit the character who changed his life: Darryl ‘Brax’ Braxton. The actor is set to film Home And Away special episodes against the backdrop of outback Western Australia in October.
The episodes will air in 2026 and reveal where life has taken the reformed bad boy and his onscreen love interest, Ricky (Bonnie Sveen), since they drove off into the sunset. Producers pitched the idea of revisiting the couple and Stephen couldn’t resist.
“They said, ‘Do you want to find out what they’re doing 10 years down the track?’ And I absolutely did. I love playing that character,” he says.
“Part of me is nervous. I want to make it good for the audience because that role was extraordinary for me. Anytime you get a chance to play a character that resonates, you should treasure it. And I’ve always treasured that role.”
While many actors use Home And Away as a springboard to break into the US, Stephen turned his Hollywood opportunities into success back home.
After appearances in Whiskey Tango Foxtrot opposite Tina Fey, Hercules with Dwayne Johnson, and a supporting role in the adaptation of Jojo Moyes’ Me Before You, he found the roles waiting for him back in Australia too good to ignore.
“Anytime you get a chance to work anywhere in the world, you take it,” he says. “I’d love to go back over there and work, but there are some pretty tasty things coming up in Australia that I’d love to be a part of.”
That loyalty has paid off, with RFDS winning the TV WEEK Silver Logie for Most Popular Drama last year. And Stephen’s return to Home And Away – a role for which he won three Logies – ensures his Summer Bay legacy lives on.
Outside work, the notoriously private star has embraced fatherhood, welcoming a daughter with Bridgette in 2022. “We always travel as a family, which is a bonus,” he says of juggling his busy acting schedule with family life.
While he insists parenthood hasn’t yet changed his approach to acting, it’s clear that being able to balance career and family life in Australia is part of what keeps him here.
So, what’s next? Stephen reveals he isn’t much of a person for five-year strategies. “I probably should have a bucket list of things I’d like to do, but I’m always happily surprised,” he says.
“I’ve found my best plan is to have no plan at all, just to try and do a good job and hope it leads to something else. I’ve had some really good jobs, so I’ll stick to that. Whatever comes, comes.”
For now, fans can look forward to seeing Stephen back in the Bay (so to speak), alongside the life-or-death drama of RFDS.
In a world where Australian stars often chase the bright lights of America, Stephen has chosen something rarer: to stay grounded and keep telling the stories that matter here at home.
This is an actor who is in his element portraying both the hero and the Aussie ‘everyman’.
“It’s nice to see a bloke like Pete written the way we normally are,” he says. “Bumbling, trying our best and stuffing it up most of the time!”
