Angelina Thomson has joined Home and Away as Kirby, keyboard player for the band Lyrik, who recently landed in Summer Bay.

This must be a great time to be on Home and Away: you’ve finally vanquished Neighbours, you’ve officially won Australian soap opera.
That’s hilarious!

Are you a lifelong fan of Home and Away, or are you coming in with new eyes?
No, I’m a fan. I’ve been a fan for a long time. I grew up on the Gold Coast and that was the nightly routine: 7pm, that’s when dinner’s on the table and that’s when the TV is on Channel Seven. That was the unwritten rule.

Tell me about your character Kirby.
Kirby is creative, she plays the keyboards, she’s a lyricist, she’s a very calm, loving peacemaker among the band, but she’s also very full-force, she’s very passionate, she has passion for her music, a lot of love for her chosen family in the band, and [for] her boyfriend who is also in the band. She’s on tour and she’s going along for the ride.

Does the band get to perform a lot on screen?
We do to some extent, we have quite a few gigs. But the writers have been amazing in the way they’ve incorporated the music into scenes – when you have someone tinkering away on the guitar, or I’ll be on the piano, it adds an element of something that you didn’t know you need until you have it. Then it’s like whoa, I don’t know how this would’ve made sense without it.

It’s interesting that you’re the keyboard player in the band, not the singer. Because we know that you are a great singer: your resume shows you’ve got a lot of experience belting out tunes on stage. Do you get to sing much on the show?
I do. Although I’m not the lead singer, we have a lot of backing vocals. We’ve been in the studio recording a lot of things. Stephanie, who plays Eden, and I, we’ve been doing a lot of backing vocals for the gigs. It’s been really special to be able to incorporate that into a world where that wasn’t the expectation when I was auditioning, that I’d be able to incorporate music and singing and playing with my acting.

Tell me about the experience of coming onto Home and Away. It’s not just any show, there’s a history there and a legacy. Are you awestruck, is it incredibly intimidating to walk onto the sets that are so familiar and it’s like, “Wow, here I am”?
Totally, totally. There were many emotions on my first week here. Because that’s the thing: all of these sets, I see them on TV all the time, but now I’m standing in them, and the world that is created on TV looks so different in reality. There are walls missing, a million cameras, a million more people in the room. To be honest, I made a real effort, coming from music theatre land, to TV land: I made an effort before I started filming to go on set and just watch a lot of the actors in their flow state. And listen to the language they spoke that I wasn’t so familiar with, so when I was on set it wasn’t so foreign to me. I made that effort because I didn’t want, that first day of filming, to feel overwhelmed.

It’s well-documented that Summer Bay can be a gateway to a major Hollywood career. Do you have your eye on that, or will you wait a few more weeks?
I really just want to take this opportunity one step at a time. I want to squeeze as much as I possibly can and learn as much as I can in these four walls. There’s an element of it that reminds me of uni: I feel like I’m constantly learning and constantly adapting to the changes. I feel like I’m being stretched as an actor. So at the moment …I have big dreams but I also want to take it one step at a time.

Obviously though, if Marvel comes calling tomorrow…
(Laughing) I don’t even know! I feel like I have dreams of working with certain people in the future. Dreams of working with Taika Waititi one day, with Frankie Adams. People who are similar to me and have changed the game in representation and done things like that. I have big dreams, but also I’m exactly where I’m meant to be right now. I trust that that is enough.