Everyone has a moment they will never forget that changed the trajectory of their life forever. For Lucy Lovegrove, that moment was landing the role of one of Chris Warner’s long-lost triplets on New Zealand’s favourite soap opera.
“Shortland Street changed my life in every imaginable way,” the 32-year-old shares from her home in Melbourne. “It’s one of those classic actor stories. I was working in a bookshop in Melbourne and I literally had 30 cents in my bank account when I got the role. Suddenly, I had a one-year job and I had to move to another country in six days.”
Lucy packed up the apartment she had recently moved into with her boyfriend Josh, 31, and set up a new life in New Zealand, while navigating the busy shooting schedules of the much-loved show.
When she said goodbye to friends and family, she had no idea she’d end up living here for three years.
“I don’t think it hit me until I arrived that I would be living in another country. It was a huge amount of change. But I wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn’t been lucky enough to have this job.”
In too deep for the 2017 Christmas cliffhanger
Since leaving the show in 2019, Lucy has made a couple of appearances via video chat with her TV dad Chris Warner, but she was delighted when she was asked to come back to help kick-start the rebuild of Shortland Street Hospital after it went up in flames in the Christmas cliffhanger.
Although she was an old hand in the fast-paced world of making a soap, Lucy was nervous about returning.
“It was fantastic, but it was a weird feeling,” she admits. “It was like when you go back and visit your primary school. Everything is so achingly familiar but different at the same time. You get match fit when you work in a place like that, so I had to work my way back to it.”
Her only other fear was returning to the New Zealand spotlight. Lucy plays Sass Warner, one of the triplets Chris fathered in the very early days of the soap’s run. Starring as one of the children of the longest-serving actor on Shorty, she received a lot of attention when she made her debut in 2016.
A Warner family snap.
Growing up in Australia, Lucy had never heard of Shorty until she landed an audition for the show, so she could not comprehend how large and passionate the soap’s fan base was.
“It’s not something you can realise until you’re in it,” tells Lucy. “All of a sudden, your social media blows up, and people are adding you and commenting on your pictures, and tweeting about you and your character with very strong opinions. It blew my mind – it was shocking.”
It wasn’t until Lucy left the show and returned home to Melbourne that she realised how much the attention had taken its toll on her mental health.
“I struggled to get used to being recognised while out and about,” she says. “I realised when I came home, and I was completely anonymous and I started relaxing, just how tense I’d been. I’d be afraid to look strangers in the eye because I didn’t want them to think I was waiting for them to recognise me. It’s taken me a while to unwind from that.”
Happily, the joy of working every day alongside Michael Galvin, who plays Chris, far outweighed the negatives of the job. When asked to divulge her favourite thing about the actor, Lucy doesn’t have enough kind words to describe him.
Lucy stars alongside Michael as his screen daughter Sass
“He’s like a big kid,” she tells. “He has this delicious goofy side to him that comes out on set. He cracks me up.”
With her own father hours away in Canberra, Michael was also there to dispense fatherly advice when she needed it.
“I remember when my boyfriend was visiting, Michael popped his head into my dressing room and introduced himself as my on-screen dad in this stern sort of fatherly way,” she recalls. “He’s definitely someone I felt like I could talk to if I was having a challenge. He’s someone you could trust with anything.”
Michael has been equally effusive about Lucy, along with her on-screen siblings Lukas Whiting (aka Finn) and Luke Patrick (Frank), even going as far as to call it one of his favourite storylines of the show. The compliment is not lost on his co-star.
“The prospect of that storyline is so crazy, but it just magically became this beautiful thing,” enthuses Lucy. “For that to have made an impact on him means a lot to me.”
Watch Lucy’s return to Shortland Street, weekdays at 7pm on TVNZ 2.
