Home and Away’s Lynne McGranger talks about how COVID-19 changed life on set

From Digital Spy

Home and Away star Lynne McGranger has revealed how coronavirus has changed life on set.

As one of the Aussie soap’s longest serving cast members, having joined the show as Irene Roberts way back in 1993, Lynne assured fans that Channel Seven are taking the situation “incredibly seriously,” and that everyone involved in production adheres to strict rules in order to keep COVID-19 at bay.

“We walk in the door; our temperature is taken every single day. Every time you turn a corner or turn your head, there’s hand sanitiser, there’s soap, there’s signs always encouraging the 1.5 metre rule,” McGranger told Digital Spy recently.

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“Even when we’re on set, crew have to have masks on the whole time and if I’m working with somebody and I’m within that 1.5 metre distance while I’m rehearsing, I need to have a mask on.

“Of course, I’ll take it off once we start recording,” she continued. “The team are moving heaven and earth to make sure that we are all safe.”

McGranger went on to recall how she’d succumbed to a common cold a few weeks ago, and despite knowing it wasn’t anything more sinister due to having “none of the symptoms,” the team couldn’t contain their relief when she got her test results back.

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“I had to stay inside until I got the results back. I was talking to Lucy our producer on the phone and she said, ‘What are the results?!’, I said I was negative, and I could hear everyone in the office cheering in the background,” she remembered.

“It’s hard enough to schedule a show like Home and Away without COVID-19. With COVID-19, it’s an absolute nightmare and I do not know how the guys upstairs do it, I really don’t know.”

Lynne also spoke about how she spent her downtime when filming stopped, telling us: “For me it was 10 weeks and genuinely I loved it. I was doing my bootcamp online, I was walking, I could still walk up to the coffee shop and get my takeaway.

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“I was reading, eating, drinking, having a great time. Paul [Lynne’s husband] and I got on really well and we planted a veggie garden and we did a herb garden and we had a fence put in.

“There was about a week or two weeks where I started to suffer a bit of anxiety which I’ve never experienced before. I woke up in the night with a dreadful knot in my stomach and funnily enough, I’ve never learnt how to meditate so I downloaded some podcasts on meditation and breathing.

“Now if I wake up in the middle of the night, I have learnt to employ that, and it helps me get back to sleep.”

Home and Away airs weekdays at 1.15pm and 6pm on Channel 5, with first-look screenings at 6.30pm on 5STAR.

The information in this story is accurate as of the publication date. While we are attempting to keep our content as up-to-date as possible, the situation surrounding the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic continues to develop rapidly, so it’s possible that some information and recommendations may have changed since publishing.

For any concerns and latest advice, visit the World Health Organisation. If you’re in the UK, the National Health Service can also provide useful information and support, while US users can contact the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

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