Lynne McGranger on loss that left her ‘really hurt’ and secret Home & Away ‘struggle’

Former Home & Away star Lynne McGranger has candidly told of her “struggle” on the set of the hit Channel Seven show, as she revealed the emotional impact of a family loss in a new interview.

Lynne – who quit Home and Away after 33 years playing the beloved character Irene Roberts in March 2025 – was speaking out on the first episode of Cracking On, a podcast hosted by Lynne’s former co-stars Sam Frost and Sarah Roberts.

On the April 23 episode of the show, Lynne revealed how she “really struggled” during her first couple of years on Home and Away.

“I really did struggle to fit in because there was this assumption I knew what I was doing, and I didn’t have a clue,” Lynne – who was a stage actor before her stint on TV – told her former castmates. “I felt like I didn’t fit in for quite a while.”

It was a feeling Sam – who rose to fame as a star of The Bachelor Australia before landing the role of Jasmine Delaney in Summer Bay – related to.

“When I started I wasn’t an actor and I had a lot of pressure on me,” Sam told Lynne during the chat. “It was awful, it was awful…

“It’s really hard when you’re in an environment with established actors and I think I was chasing my tail the whole time I was there, trying to prove that I was  able to do it,” she added.

While Lynne went as far as to claim there was a time she felt like she was “bullied” on the set of Home and Away, she also shared details of a storyline that impacted her deeply after she suffered a personal loss.

The star, who shares an adult daughter, Clancy, with her partner Paul McWaters, told of what happened when she had to portray her on-screen character having a baby, while in real life she had suffered a miscarriage.

Clancy was aged five when Lynne fell pregnant, with producers adding a storyline that saw Irene become a surrogate too.

“Unfortunately, I lost the baby at 16 weeks and that was kind of traumatic enough as it was,” Lynne shared on the podcast.

“Obviously it was awful, and I had to go in for a D&C and went back to work on the Monday and, in all fairness, the producers did come and I talked to them and they said ‘do you want us to write in to change it?’ she explained.

“What are you going to do? Write in a miscarriage? It was hard. It was harder than I thought it would be. 

“I decided that it was easier to strap on the bump – we’ve all done that – and go ahead with the storyline, and give birth.”

Lynne then went on to detail the harrowing on-set moment that left her in bits.

“Where it really hit home for me, where I really lost it in studio, what I had to do as Irene is go and get the ultrasound, and come back with the photos,” the actor explained.

“That was really hard. That was the hardest thing, and it caught me by surprise because I thought I’d grieved at home with Clancy and Paul.

“That really hurt.”

Lynne was then aged 43 and she revealed she and Paul tried for another baby for the next six months.

Finally, however, the pair realised that even if Lynne was lucky enough to fall pregnant, it was “too risky”.