It’s been 27 years since Toni Pearen’s schoolteacher character, Beth Armstrong, was last seen on Home And Away.
But, after going on I’m A Celebrity, Toni can imagine returning to the Bay as Beth.
“Her affair with student Tug [Tristan Bancks] was very illicit, so she was banished,” Toni, 48, explains.
“But wouldn’t it be nice to see her come back, and she’s had this crooked past and she ends up in Summer Bay to redeem herself… with Tug’s child? Now there’s a plot twist!”
The actress and presenter has rarely been seen on TV since the birth of her first child, Lucky, in 2009.
She tells TV WEEK she struggled to deal with the paparazzi as a new mum.
“I had cameras in my face all the time,” she recalls. “We all want to be perfect mums, we all want to look like we know what we’re doing, and I knew I didn’t.
“I was struggling as a mum and then struggling knowing they might print my struggles. It was a tough time, and I thought to myself, ‘This is not the world I want for my kids.'”
Toni and husband Will Osmond moved to Sydney’s northern beaches, where they started “a new life”, with Toni focusing on son Lucky and daughter Ever, who was born in 2012.
She admits she was “terrified” about returning to the spotlight on I’m A Celebrity, but now feels “absolutely ready” for a regular television role.
“I miss just making television,” she confesses.