Sam Atwell, a former star of Home and Away, is now an Irish citizen and has worked on productions like Kin and Smother.
In 2013, the soap star moved to Dublin from Sydney and Summer Bay.
He also received his Irish passport earlier this year, making it official.
“It was a thrilling experience.” It took a long time because I applied at the end of 2019, and it’s a difficult process where you have to verify you’ve lived here for five years and have all the necessary documentation.
“So that took a while to get together…
And then the passport office shut down because of Covid.”
He added: “It’s really nice to have the passport and it’s great to have the passport, I’m looking forward to voting as well…
Because there was no ceremony because of Covid, I received a wonderfully lovely letter from the Minister in the mail.”
Sam played Kane Phillips on and off for years on the programme, and was at the centre of a contentious storyline in which he sexually raped Dani Sutherland before marrying her sister.
He then worked behind the scenes as well.
He told the Irish podcast Tis Yourself: “I was there for 13 years on and off. I was an actor and then I was a director and then went into the writing department so I was a writer, writing scripts as well so I was able to see every different department.”
He enjoyed working on the soap opera. Sam stated that he had itchy feet and that an opportunity had presented itself to him.
“I was really keen to travel the world basically… I had always planned to go to London as so many Aussies do and I came over to Dublin and really fell in love with it and I met Brigie DeCourcy who is Executive Producer of Fair City, they needed directors at the time and I said I’d be back in a month, and I was.”
He explained: “It was through a family connection, a cousin at Fair City. I was like, ‘can you tell me about the industry over here?’ And she said, ‘why don’t you come and meet Brigie?’
“So that’s how it happened. So I was a director and then the script producer moved onto another show, Red Rock, and so they needed a script producer and they said, ‘would you like to do that?’ and that was a four year gig.”
Despite living so far away from The Bay, he was able to reconnect with some of his old co-stars.
“There was a while there on Fair City where a lot of them would come over and do promotional stuff, opening nightclubs and things like that and I got to see a few of them as they were coming over which was really nice.
“When they were here, they were like ‘oh my God, it’s just amazing. This nightclub, there’s people lining up down the street.’”
And now Sam is working in Drama Development in RTE.
“We work on shows like Hidden Assets, Kin as well, Smother, all the shows that are on RTE One. They’re fantastic to work on, it’s just a joy to read all the scripts.
“And we’re also helping to organise how the show is going to be run and work for RTE and then at the moment we’ve got 15 other shows, as well as the big shows that we’re already working on.
“We’ve 15 others in development that might be on RTE one, or RTE Two, so that’s really exciting.”
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