One of the great things about working in a serial drama, actress Ashleigh Brewer happily admits, is that you never know what’s coming.
When her character Ivy Forrester (part of the series’ central Forrester clan) arrived on long-running US soap The Bold And The Beautiful in 2014, Ashleigh didn’t know she was about to become a worldwide fan favourite for her on-again, off-again romance with series stalwart Liam Spencer (Scott Clifton).
It was, to put it mildly, a textbook soap relationship, with true love, betrayal, misunderstanding, lost love, a wedding (to avoid deportation), a side romance with Liam’s brother Wyatt (Darin Brooks) and, finally, a break-up that sent Ivy heading back to Australia.
And that, fans and Ashleigh thought, was probably that. Ivy had caused chaos and burned bridges, so it made sense the character would leave, never to be seen again.
Once again, however, Ashleigh didn’t know what was coming…
“Ivy is back!” the former Neighbours star, 33, tells TV WEEK, “and she’s bringing lots of drama! She brings a little Aussie spice back to the show, which is great. She’s going to get her hands dirty; get in there and do what she does best: ruffle some feathers.”
Ashleigh couldn’t be happier with her return to the hit drama, particularly given she recently got engaged to film producer Mark Bauch and has made Los Angeles her home, with a core group of Australian friends around her.
Two of those friends are fellow Neighbours star Margot Robbie – who Ashleigh shared an apartment with when she first moved to LA (and acted alongside, as Totally Hair Barbie, in the mega-hit 2023 Hollywood film Barbie) – and Phoebe Tonkin, most recently seen in the TV WEEK Logie Award-winning Boy Swallows Universe. It was Phoebe, actually, who introduced her to Mark.
“We were both in [teen fantasy drama] H2O: Just Add Water when I was about 14 and she was, like, 15 and we’ve been friends ever since,” Ashleigh says. “Long story short: she’d been wanting to set up Mark and I for a while, and the timing finally worked out almost three years ago now. We got engaged in London in January this year.
“Who would have known that, all those years ago, I’d met the girl who’d be the one to introduce me to my future husband!”
That’s a far more straightforward romance than those Ivy left behind when Ashleigh farewelled Bold in 2018 – and which she hints could be coming again.
“I’m honestly thrilled to be going back in such a serious way,” she says. “They’ve brought in a new character, Electra [Laneya Grace], who’s my niece, and there are a lot of cool things coming.”
Given Ivy’s unexpected return, and that Ashleigh is very much a part of TV drama royalty in not one but two countries – having played a Forrester in Bold and a Ramsay in Neighbours – is there ever any chance of a second surprise comeback?
“My Neighbours character, Kate Ramsey, was killed off, shot by a sniper,” she says. “But even still, my Instagram is full of theories about why she’s not really dead and how she would come back – and a lot of it makes sense.
“That’s why these shows are so fun – because there are no rules: you can truly do what you want!”
The Bold And The Beautiful airs weekdays, 4.30pm on 10
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