Thirty years after a 15-year-old Ryan Moloney, aka “Toadfish” Rebecchi, gave up his military aspirations for the Neighbours role that would come to define him, he is at last a soldier. Standing to attention in the Moroccan desert, sweat beading his familiar brow as he endures the barked insults of former British elite soldiers, along with 13 other celebrities on SAS: AUS v ENG, Moloney is in his element.
“If you tell me to run into a brick wall, I’ll run head first into it,” he declares at the outset of the series. Born to follow orders, a stickler for the rules, and with a work ethic honed through the soap’s famously tight production schedule, Moloney is a powerful weapon for the Australian side in this mock battle that simulates the selection process for elite army personnel.
“I freaking loved it!” says Moloney, who would have readily joined the air force to become a pilot, if not for his big break in acting. “It’s about pushing yourself to the limit and finding out what comes out. It’s about resigning yourself to what you are doing, not resisting, and giving 100 per cent.
“Those soldiers are next level. When they tell you what they have experienced, you’re completely humbled to think that you know people who’ve had to do those things. If there’s a task, and you’ve failed, they give you a real-life example of how this situation played out, and you go, ‘Holy shit, man! This is full on!’”
Since exiting Neighbours in September 2024, when Toadie left Erinsborough for the Victorian town of Colac following mental health struggles, Moloney has busied himself with his off-grid farm in rural Victoria, where he lives with his wife and their two children. He runs a small business providing local properties with animal care, fencing and maintenance.
“I’m pretty happy out on a tractor and spending 12 hours a day building stuff … There was a moment [after Neighbours], of going, ‘What am I going to do?’ Then I was like, ‘Why don’t I just do the stuff that I do here every day, and do it for other people?’.”
Also now the proud owner of a commercial pilot’s licence, Moloney feels he has finally shed his lifelong alter ego.
“It’s up to other people as to whether or not I can leave Toadie behind,” he says. “I played him for quite a long time, and it was time for that to stop. I was glad when [the Neighbours producers] said, ‘We’re not going to renew your contract’. I was like, ‘Oh, thank God! Thank you!’”
Still, leaving the set that had become his second home was bittersweet.
“My last scene was quite emotional,” he says. “We’re talking about Toadie leaving and all these feelings that are actually real for us, and people who’ve known each other for so long.”
It’s very different environment the actor found himself in on this new series. Each day of SAS: AUS v ENG‘s 10-day shoot “felt like three days” as Moloney undertook gruelling training exercises along with Aussie soap alumni Natalie Bassingthwaighte and Axle Whitehead; cricketer Brad Hodge; Olympians Mack Horton and Emily Seebohm; and Married At First Sight’s Jessika Power. Their British opponents are a mix of athletes, reality-TV stars and influencers. Dodging explosives, surviving underwater while trapped in a submerged fuselage, and one-on-one combat were all part of the routine. Misdemeanours resulted in the entire group punished with harsh physical and mental challenges.
This season, in place of outgoing chief instructor Ant Middleton, is fellow former UK special forces member and former sergeant major Mark “Billy” Billingham. Unlike some of the other contestants, Moloney gained the respect of the decorated solider and his crew from the first brutal “interrogation”.
“They didn’t really get in my face,” Moloney says. “They just went, well, he’s doing his best, so that’s all we can ask for. And all of them were full of jokes. They saw that there were other people who were not giving 100 per cent, and so they copped it. Some of the recruits were really scared of them.”
Appointed “duty officer” of the camp, it was Moloney’s job to ensure protocol was followed, sometimes to the chagrin of his fellow cast mates: “I think I annoyed them relatively quickly.”
Moloney recalls clashing with British Olympic bobsledder turned TV “Gladiator”, Toby Olubi. “He wasn’t there for the team, and that made life difficult. We got punished a lot because of Toby.”
Moloney did, however, find camaraderie with Axle Whitehead and former rugby union player Ben Cohen, bonding with the latter over their shared hearing loss which Moloney says he acquired through Neighbours promotional appearances at nightclubs. These friendships were vital when unexpected and confusing emotions overwhelmed him. He would later put the cause down to an undiagnosed stomach hernia.
“Normally, if I’m upset about something, I know what it is. And I was like, ‘I have no idea what this is about. I feel like I’m actually losing my mind’. It wasn’t a fun experience. But then when I got home, I discovered that I had a giant hernia. I had half of my insides shoved up underneath my left lung. I was actually pretty sick. And that can be responsible for a lot of emotional dysregulation,” he says.
“I had immediate surgery afterwards and made some lifestyle changes. The way I look at life, and the important things – eating more regularly and the diet itself, looking after yourself and spending time with family – are taken to the forefront, which is fantastic.”
Given his time again, though, Moloney would still apply for the Australian Defence Force, despite his small taste of the real thing.
“I think anyone who signs up and takes on that life is a very courageous and pretty amazing individual.”
SAS: AUS v ENG returns Wednesday, April 29, 7.30pm on Seven and 7Plus.
