Mcleod's Daughters: articles


bridesmaids

GIRLS alight ... the bridesmaids also had specially designed dresses to skim the horses' rear-ends.

Stevie falls for Alex

IT WOULDN'T be a McLeod's Daughters wedding without a bit of on-screen drama.

But when Simmone Jade Mackinnon's Stevie Hall tied the knot with Alex Ryan, who is played by Aaron Jeffrey, there were a few problems before the cameras even started rolling.

The wedding episode, which will screen on Channel 9 tonight, was filmed just before Christmas which meant the guests were all decked out in their best clothes on one of South Australia's hottest summer days.

"It's either yellow and dusty or lush and green at Drovers Run, and we did this during the summer so it was yellow and dusty," Mackinnon says.

"The heat was horrible. There's a sequence after the wedding where we have a big marquee for the reception and it was a scorching day and everyone was almost passing out from the heat."

But when Mackinnon got on her horse, to film the scene that Stevie's dress had been specifically designed for, it wasn't the heat that caused her to take her first fall since joining the McLeod's cast.

The actress says that the horse was spooked by her wedding dress ­ which she describes as a "big white parachute" ­ and when he bolted Mackinnon wound up on the ground.

"We had done the majority of the wedding sequence, we had done the first dance that morning and done the vows the day before, and they wanted this back view of the dress," she says.

"This beautiful dress that I had helped design, we picked it out of a magazine and it was that dress that I wanted because it would look great hanging over the back of the horse Banjo.

"I coaxed the director into it, and the bridesmaid's dresses all draped over their horses' rumps, and we did the whole thing to get that shot from the back riding to the homestead.

"But they thought I had broken my pelvis when I fell off the horse so I was in hospital being checked out and we never got to film that shot."

While Mackinnon described shooting the wedding episode as "just another day in the office", she said she wanted it to be "as beautiful as it could be" because everyone had been waiting four years for it to happen.

"It started right back at the beginning; the writers had it in their mind that Stevie and Alex would get together but I didn't think it would take as long as it has," she says.

"I didn't know if we would get married. I was always told that we would get together, but season after season would go by and nothing would happen.

"I like it when Stevie and Alex are in conflict and bickering about the little things. I found that stuff enjoyable. It was fun to shoot because Aaron is so quick and sharp and it could be very funny.

"But I was aching for them to get together because Stevie had that one shot at love with Kane way back at the beginning, but the audience hadn't seen her 'loved up' ­ she wasn't able to show that side."

Mackinnon says she had an inkling it wouldn't be long before the characters hooked up when Alex came home to Killarney last season with a fiancee in tow.

"Then there was the kiss on the staircase, and I knew they couldn't stretch it because that would be too frustrating for everyone," she says.

"To come that close and then tear them apart, but it has been a bit of a ride."

By Sarah Nicholson
June 20, 2007
The Courier-Mail