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OVER a stiff orange juice at Sydney's Soho Bar, Home And Away medico
Katrina Hobbs is spilling the beans about the on-screen death of co-star Dieter
Brummer.
The face of Summer Bay's earnest medical intern, Dr Kelly Watson, Hobbs drops
a bombshell about the demise of teen heart-throb Shane Parish (Brummer) that
will leave fans of the soap reeling.
"I killed Shane," she confesses. "My character removed his spleen and months
later he cut himself on a nail and died of septicaemia. He couldn't fight the
infection. Nobody's put the two together."
On set, the unlikely plot twist has earned her the nickname "Dr Death" from
fellow cast members, but Hobbs takes the job of playing an on-screen medico
seriously.
In the lead-up to joining the soap's cast last August, she tagged along with
doctors on their rounds at Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital, taking notes on
everything from their bedside manner to how they held their stethoscopes. An
on-set nurse coaches Hobbs on the finer points of playing a doctor, and she
hopes to accompany paramedics on a shift to experience first-hand the drama of
real-life emergencies.
Outside Home And Away's shooting
schedule, Hobbs escapes to the Soho Bar on Kings Cross's Victoria Street to
down a few soothing ales and unwind playing pool.
"It's not somewhere I go every weekend, but if I go out I will come and play
on the pool tables," she says.
"I love the decor and the atmosphere. It's nice and light, not closed in, and
I love the tiled effect."
Hobbs knows a thing or two about bars, having spent
a year pulling beers in her native New Zealand, as she waited for her acting
career to take off.
"You learn to deal with people really well when you have to tell someone
who's had too much to drink they can't have another round," she says.
She also learned a thing about pool and now counts working the tables in
Sydney bars as one of her greatest passions apart from acting.
"The best time I ever had in a bar was when my
brother and I were playing pool for eight games in a row," she says. "We just
beat every person who came up."
Between frames her preferred drink is a Heineken, a substitute for her
favourite Kiwi beer, Max Gold.
"It's the best beer, naturally fermented, similar to Cascade, but it's got a
Kiwi flavour all of its own," she says. "You don't get hangovers!"
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