While they’re known to catch up quite often, seeing Home And Away royalty Kate Ritchie and Ray Meagher together on TV is the rarest treasure.
And so when the former colleagues took to the Logies stage to present the Bert Newton Award for Most Popular Presenter, there was barely a dry eye in the house!
“It’s always so lovely to see Ray,” Kate, 46, tells TV WEEK. “We were just saying how we have to make time to catch up properly,” with Ray adding that they “always try to do it at least once a year” but haven’t in a while as their schedules have been “a little crazy lately”.
“You did come to the 80th that Channel Seven threw me, though,” he says. “It was so nice of you to come to a silly old bugger’s birthday party too, given how you were filming 18 things at once.”
Ray, who plays Summer Bay veteran Alf Stewart, first met Kate, who played Sally Fletcher, as a shy nine-year-old in the drama’s pilot episode in 1988. He says he’s been so proud to watch his friend’s career flourish since she left the show in 2008, and thought she was “fantastic” in the Logie-nominated 2023 crime drama The Claremont Murders.
“If there ever was a natural, she’s standing right here,” he says. “Kate just picks up the script and it happens. It drives me nuts – it shouldn’t be that easy! I’d welcome her back [to Home And Away] with open arms tomorrow.”
And it seems as if fans would also love her to come back, with rumours of a return swirling almost every week.
“They didn’t kill me off, so they [the show’s producers] have left the door open,” Kate says. “But it’s not happening anytime soon.”