Television favourite Virginia Gay regularly gets recognised in the street – but for all the wrong reasons. “People tell me we went to medical school together,” laughs the All Saints star, who shot to fame as nursing unit manager Gabrielle Jaeger in the hospital drama.
“So I have to explain, ‘No, that really didn’t happen!’ I can look concerned and alarmed and pretend to carry out medical procedures, but please don’t ever leave me with an actual patient!”
Amazingly, it’s 25 years since All Saints premiered on February 24, 1998. The show starred dual TV WEEK Gold Logie winner Georgie Parker as compassionate nursing nun Sister Terri Sullivan, and her dedicated team on “garbage ward” 17.
She never thought she could be an actor.
(Image: Getty)Throughout its 12-year run, the hit show featured a roll call of Australia’s most illustrious acting talent – Erik Thomson, John Howard, Judith McGrath, Libby Tanner, Jenni Baird, Tammy MacIntosh, John Waters, Alexandra Davies, Jolene Anderson and many, many more.
For Virginia – fresh out of drama school when she joined All Saints in season nine – it was a dream job that came her way through a quirk of fate. Students in her year at the WA Academy of Performing Arts were invited to film a mock audition for producers, simply as an experiment.
HOTBED OF EMOTION
“We were warned in advance that it was just for experience, nothing would come from it,” smiles the statuesque 41-year-old. “But someone at Seven watched my tape, saw my chin in profile and thought I could be a long-lost daughter or sister of John Howard.
“I always thought my chin was one of my worst features and yet it somehow ended up one of my most valuable qualities. That’s a wonderful way to think about your flaws, people. They can turn out to be advantages!
She was also on Winners & Losers!
(Image: Getty)“I got the role three days before Christmas, a three-year contract with Seven, which was pretty extraordinary straight out of drama school. I never thought I’d be a television actor, because I’ve got a huge face and I’m 1.78m tall, nearly six foot.
“So it was incredible not only to start my career on screen but also to learn through the finely oiled machine that was All Saints.”
On screen, the show was a hotbed of heightened emotion, life and death decisions, horrific accidents, illness and, sometimes, heartwarming cures. Off screen, as regular cast and guest stars came and went through 493 episodes and an epic 56 Logie nominations, enduring friendships were formed.
VIEWER OUTRAGE
Yet All Saints, although much loved, wasn’t without controversy. Viewers were outraged when John Howard’s newly introduced character – cranky head of emergency Frank Campion – swore at his first meeting with saintly Sister Terri.
The backlash was immediate. Seven received more than 100 complaint calls in Melbourne alone but refused to apologise since the program had an M classification, permitting coarse language.
On another occasion, the network was threatened with a lawsuit and advertising boycott over a Down syndrome storyline that got its facts seriously wrong.
But such mistakes were very rare. “We tried really hard to get the specifics correct, because a lot of medical professionals watched the show,” Virginia explains. “We’d get letters if anything was wrong.
“We always had two registered nurses on set to show us how to put in a cannula, how to relocate a dislocated knee, how often to give a ‘patient’ painkillers. But we did a lot of the medical procedures off screen, twisting the sheets so we’d look busy when our hands were out of shot!”
“Don’t ever leave me with an actual patient!”
(Image: Getty)Looking back, she remembers a lot of laughter. “We had so much fun on set, it was kind of extraordinary. There was so much drama and pain going on around us, but we tried to find the lightness between takes.
“It really was like family because we all spent so much time together. Wil Traval and Celeste Barber are two of my dearest friends to this day. It was just an incredibly lucky start, and how grateful I am for it!”
After All Saints, Virginia’s television career continued to thrive with Winners & Losers. On stage, she has been widely acclaimed for Calamity Jane, The Boomkak Panto and her own retelling of Cyrano, featuring a clever gender flip.
But the hospital drama remains a highlight. “You know, I sometimes think my family takes my medical advice more seriously because I was in All Saints,” she chuckles. “I tell my father to go to the doctor and he does, because I’m an ex-fake nurse, and I know best!”
