25 years of All Saints - 'We were under intense pressure'

Actress Virginia Gay recalls the huge burden of telling real medical stories on the hit Aussie soap

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Television favourite Virginia Gay regularly gets recognised in the street – but for all the wrong reasons. “People tell me we went to medical school together,” laughs the All Saints star, who shot to fame as nursing unit manager Gabrielle Jaeger in the hospital drama.

“So I have to explain, ‘No, that really didn’t happen!’ I can look concerned and alarmed and pretend to carry out medical procedures, but please don’t ever leave me with an actual patient!”

Amazingly, it’s 25 years since All Saints premiered on February 24, 1998. The show starred dual TV WEEK Gold Logie winner Georgie Parker as compassionate nursing nun Sister Terri Sullivan, and her dedicated team on "garbage ward" 17.

Throughout its 12-year run, the hit show featured a roll call of Australia's most illustrious acting talent - Erik Thomson, John Howard, Judith McGrath, Libby Tanner, Jenni Baird, Tammy MacIntosh, John Waters, Alexandra Davies, Jolene Anderson and many, many more.

For Virginia - fresh out of drama school when she joined All Saints in season nine - it was a dream job that came her way through a quirk of fate. Students in her year at the WA Academy of Performing Arts were invited to film a mock audition for producers, simply as an experiment.