'My audience is nostalgic — I'll take it': Jason Donovan on life, fame and Cork return
Jason Donovan: “I could have done movies, a bit more TV, but I decided that I wanted to be a pop star. I look at my contemporaries, you know, the Russells, the Guy Pearces, and there’s always a twinge of ‘What if I’d taken that route?’ but it’s not keeping me awake at night." Pic: Steve Schofield
So, Jason Donovan, teenage icon of the ’80s, how often are your interviewers women of a certain vintage?
And how many of them, halfway through the conversation, admit that they had posters of you strewn across their teenage bedrooms?
Let’s get this out of the way, Jason Donovan. I was one of those devoted fans.
Scott and Charlene were my idols. Ramsay Street was an exotic escape from a dank and grey 1980s Ireland.
Somewhere in the darkest depths of my attic, there are photos of me in my confirmation outfit posing alongside a poster of you, my Aussie icon.
A year or so later, I would be in first-year and I’d discover Pink Floyd, Dylan, lather henna in my hair, and dress only from Red Square and Cork’s handful of other second-hand shops — but that summer of ’88 was all cheesy pop.
And no one captured the zeitgeist like Jason Donovan.
Through the Zoom screen, I start to feel my interviewee recoil ever so slightly.
I stop myself from all but twirling my hair, remind myself I am a woman on the cusp of 50 and draw a halt to my tween reminiscing.
It’s hard to explain the impact one low-budget TV soap and Stock, Aitken, and Waterman’s yellow-pack, manufactured pop had on a generation.
In this era before social media, all we had was radio, terrestrial TV, and magazine for our culture fix.
And Jason Donovan saturated all three, with his romantic lead on , and chart-topping hits such as ‘Too Many Broken Hearts’.
I can remember my hand physically shaking with excitement as I turned on the TV to watch Charlene and Scott marry.
At school, ‘The Wedding Episode’ was our watercooler moment — we squealed, cried, and gushed as we analysed every moment.
One day, we declared, we would all wear wedding dresses like Charlene’s. (The introduction to feminism came a little later, around the same time as the henna.)
And when Kylie and Jason left and joined forces with Stock, Aitken, and Waterman, releasing duet ‘Especially For You’ together, we discovered they were actually going out with each other — IRL!!!
I’m travelling down memory lane with Jason Donovan ahead of his show at Cork Opera House this April.
is a play on the title of his live tour 35 years ago — .
It’s billed as a “celebration of his remarkable career in music, theatre, film, and TV”.
It’s Jason, on a stage, sharing career highlights and Neighbours anecdotes, interspersed with his songs from the ’80s and the musicals he has become synonymous with — everything from and to and .
Cork’s 1000-seater Opera House needs to be ready, for me and 999 of my doppelgängers.
Donovan himself knows precisely what’s ahead.
“My audience is nostalgic. I’m at that end in my career and listen, I’ll take it, thank you very much. There are no negatives, no negatives at all, I’m very lucky,” says Donovan, speaking over Zoom from his hotel room in Edinburgh, where he is starring in .
“I’m not surprised [at the reaction] because I’ve lived the life, so I’ve had my eyes wide open… well, since 1986. I suppose things changed dramatically for me then.
“I guess that currency, that historical heritage gets more valuable in a way, the older you get, because it’s sentimental, not just to me, but to you as well.”
Just like that, Jason Donovan nails it. His music, his acting, his very existence, brings me, and so many others like me, back to our childhoods.
It’s only natural, in this era of pandemics and Donald Trump, that we’d want to tap back into a simpler, non-cynical time. He understands this and elaborates with deep insight.
“I have children, and I understand how they view the world. With pop stars, my daughter going to Taylor Swift, and the look in her eyes, the excitement...
“It’s clean, it’s good, it’s positive, it’s not drugs, it’s not credit cards, it’s not mortgages — it’s just pure, it’s life blossoming, it’s a flower blossoming that just sucks in the light, and the water, and the air, and it’s not sort of killed by life yet.
“There’s no cynicism and I make a living out of that. I made a bloody good living out of it, and thank you very much, thank you very, very much, in a very positive, non-cynical way.
“The innocence is something I completely understand, and I’m very grateful to be part of it.”
With this perspective on life, Jason Donovan isn’t afraid to embrace his past and bring it to the stage.
“This show goes back to my first live work,” he says. “For me, that was a game changer, that tour. When I jumped into music, I wasn’t as prepared as I was as an actor. It wasn’t my natural habitat.
"I knew I had to play live, and that was the tour. So I’m coming back to that after 35 years.”
His career trajectory in the ’80s was extraordinary. A child star in Australia, his role as Scott in brought him international fame. And when his co-star Kylie Minogue signed with Stock, Aitken, and Waterman, he was on the next flight behind her. A pop star was born. Almost overnight.
While he laps up the audience nostalgia, you won’t find him checking out old episodes on YouTube.
“I get to see enough clips when I go on TV,” he laughs. The music, though, is different.
“Occasionally what I do love is, if I get away at weekends and I’m not working, and I’m sitting out in the country with a fire on and a glass of wine, and I flip to BBC4 and Top of the Pops from 1989 or 1990 comes on...
"That really, y'know, evokes strong memories and affection. There’s the pop culturalism of that moment — the clothes, everything. But it’s also because of the other acts that are around at the time, you’re in a chart with Neneh Cherry and U2.
“I guess even if you’re an actor, it doesn’t quite come back like that — you don’t have ‘Channel 5’s greatest television moments of all time’. It doesn’t resonate quite like a three-and-a-half-minute pop song.
“Music’s magic, hence why I sort of jumped the acting ship a little bit when I saw the opportunity to create pop records, because I just loved what music can do. Music is incredible, it speaks to you like nothing, no other language, does.”
Jason Donovan is, it’s becoming more and more apparent, a deep thinker. At times, he pauses to take note of sentence or phrase, a throwaway line he likes the sound of and wants to retain.
I make my apologies — and bring the conversation back to the really important stuff.
Jason, we need to talk about The Mullet.
Did he ever think Scott Robinson could be cool again? The straggly hair, the ripped, baggy jeans? Those old stills could have been taken today.
“I sort of rebelled against my image,” Donovan says, “because I thought that I needed to be accepted — ironically, that stuff, it doesn’t matter to me now.
“When it came to the music back then, coming to London, it was very stylised. There were bigger budgets, of course. London was cutting edge, there were No1 records, you were presenting yourself. There was a whole team.
“Going into , with the skateboard and the haircut — that was me. But ironically, when my solo career took off, I chopped the hair off, not dissimilar to — and I’m not comparing myself to — Harry Styles.
“But the whole thing that I had was my creation, definitely.”
Donovan had no idea how huge the show would become when he was first cast, aged just 16.
His father, acclaimed Australian actor Terence Donovan, advised him initially to turn the part down.
“I auditioned for in 1984 for a version of the show that was then at a station called Channel 7. I turned it down, ironically, on my dad’s advice, so I could finish school first. That was a big decision,” he recalls.
“But it didn’t work at Channel 7, it went into hiatus until Channel 10 saw the potential. I went back in and re-auditioned and that’s where the story begins for me. So it was sort of meant to be.”
Not that Jason Donovan believes in such a thing as fate. “I believe in timing,” he says sagely. “Timing is everything and luck plays a part in timing because you need to be prepared to be lucky. When the moment comes, you’re ready to be lucky.
“I think we all have regrets,” he continues, “but I don’t concentrate on those regrets because I’m very fortunate to have had a very colourful life so far.
“I could have gone in different directions, I probably would have loved to have done some films.
“I could have done movies, a bit more TV, but I decided that I wanted to be a pop star. I look at my contemporaries, you know, the Russells, the Guy Pearces, and there’s always a twinge of ‘What if I’d taken that route?’ but it’s not keeping me awake at night.
"That’s your professional life. You get to 56, 57, where I’m at, and you sort of just go — I’m still ambitious — but I’m also realistic and quite happy with what I have.
“The most important thing to me is to work and enjoy my work. What matters to me is having a great holiday with my family, having great lunches and a nice bottle of wine. You know, mowing my lawn, keeping my house really nice...”
The word I think Jason Donovan is seeking is ‘content’.
“Yes,” he agrees. “I’m quite happy with where I am at my age. I got a lot quite young so my foundations have always been quite good. I’ve rocked the foundations a few times but they’re solid enough to withstand the vibrations.”
These foundations, he elaborates, are his family. He met his wife on the set of (she was stage manager) and they have three children.
His eldest daughter had a starring role in the new incarnation of .
His father has also been a steadfast influence on his life.
“He’s a huge force, a bit of a hero to me. He’s flawed,” he laughs, “but that’s maybe why I’m sort of quite like him in a way.
“My parents split when I was young and my dad got custody of me. It was very unique in 1972 for a man to get custody of a son, so we have a bond. I’ve never known anyone longer in my life than my dad...
“Dad, as an actor, has achieved a lot but sometimes in his head he thinks he never achieved enough. But I keep saying, ‘Dad, you’re 89, the competition’s dead! It doesn’t matter whether they got a Golden Globe or not. They’re gone!”
Donovan has been dealing with celebrity from childhood. He observed his father’s fame as a child and had to manage his own from his teen years.
“I walk down the road with a hat on,” he says. “Usually I don’t create waves of attention, but I’m not someone who seeks it, so I’d rather be discreet than not.
“I’m quite happy with the fame that I had, because I didn’t get into the business to be famous — it found me. I’ve never lost sight of that.
"Though in the madness, when things were at their peak, 91-92, it was pretty claustrophobic, hence why I sort of talk about that ’90s rebellious period.”
Ah, yes. The rebellious period. As Donovan himself describes it, “I went out one night in 1994 and I don’t think I came through until about 1999.”
When the soap star turned pop star discovered his fans had turned to Nirvana and ’90s cool, Andrew Lloyd Webber came calling, casting him in .
And a new, thriving hit career in musicals was born. Still, though, this transition wasn’t easy for Donovan, and he has spoken candidly about his drug problem.
“I think my actions were a reaction — you know, I sort of looked at myself after Joseph and saw myself in a loin cloth and a pair of white fluffy socks with a multicoloured coat, thinking, ‘What’s going on here?’
“Career-wise, it was a peak, almost, but I wasn’t quite sure about the narrative that was driving it. I don’t know many high-profile people that don’t go through that experience in their lives, you know, where they sort of fight against the persona that they’re given.
“I still worked, I still did things, it was just not a very focused time. It was just a waste of time, there’s not a lot of substance to it, y'know? That wasn’t a full life.
“But, y'know, it’s a wonderful place to draw character from. The good news is I now know what I don’t want to do in my life. Some people only come to that at my age.
"They cruise through their 20s and 30s, and then go ‘What the fuck? What’s this all about?’ and just go nuts. I did it in my 20s with a good foundation behind me so I’m still ahead.”
There’s just enough time for one more question.
The reunion. What was it like and, tell us the truth, – is there a WhatsApp group?
“It was a quick day on the set,” he says. “It was okay. I mean, it meant a lot more for everyone watching, if you know what I mean. It was lovely and I think it was something that needed to happen.
“We are all very grateful for how it changed all of our lives, all of us — Margot Robbie, Guy, Russell. It was a big thing, Neighbours, and it was quite a credible thing.”
And no, while there’s no WhatsApp group, the cast sporadically keep in touch.
“I’m in touch with Guy and Kylie and Stefan Dennis occasionally but that’s about all.”
As he readies himself for Cork, we turn to his Irish surname. He knows there’s an Irish connection there but when he did , the researchers focused on his mum’s side. Nevertheless, he feels the Irish connection, though not in the way we might expect.
“When I did Strictly Come Dancing in 2011, we toured with the show in 2012 and each show has a sort of a voting system. The only place that I managed to be the winner of the Strictly Come Dancing tour was in Ireland. I’m sure it was because of my surname, nothing else,” he laughs.
Just before my chat with Donovan, the PR at the Opera House messaged me as we confirmed Zoom links and times.
“What would you say to 12-year-old Vickie Maye,” he asked, “if she knew she’d one day be interviewing Jason Donovan?”
They say you should never meet your idols. But they are wrong. Jason Donovan is down to earth, unaffected by fame or ego. I’d tell my 12-year-old self, I decide, that she chose her tween obsession well.
- Tickets for Jason Donovan’s Doin’ Fine 25, on April 4, are available at operahouse.ie.
