Home and Away's Jacqui Purvis wants to make a difference with her surprising new project

Jacqui Purvis captured Home and Away fans’ hearts with her stint on the soap as Felicity Newman, the fierce yet vulnerable character who had an epic love story with Tane Parata (Ethan Browne). When she was killed off in August 2024 with a surprise brain aneurysm, viewers were devastated to see her go, but interested to see where her acting talents would take her.

After taking some time to work on her screen career and travelling to the USA — she’s been cast in a big film Fear Is The Rider — Jacqui has made a surprising decision to return to Australia for her first professional theatre role. The actor founded her own production company NicNac Productions to “flip the script on female narratives”, and wants to create more strong female-led content.

Her new play, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea written by John Patrick Shanley, will be playing at The Old Fitz Theatre in Melbourne from January 13 until February 1, 2026. It’s a gritty, violent and romantic play featuring two characters, with the other lead played by Jacqui’s real-life boyfriend JK Kazzi.

“It’s kind of dangerous, it’s emotional, it’s kind of violent, but it’s also got romance and at the base of it, it’s love. It’s about love and connection… and I thought it was a really great time to do it at the moment, because we’ve kind of drifted from human connection,” Jacqui tells Chattr.

Jacqui chose to produce Danny and the Deep Blue Sea partly because her character, Roberta, is such a strong female character who breaks out of the boxes so many are placed in. “Everything’s put out onto the table… all your dirt, and grit, and messiness, and everything. I think that’s what I love about strong female characters, the messiness, and I don’t want to shy away from that because that is a part of us,” she explains.

When the former Home and Away star was growing up, she had a passion for sports and action films, but failed to see herself reflected in many of the roles, joking she wanted to be Matt Damon. This has influenced her ethos going forward, and it’s why she plans to make a change. “I wanted to see strong, gritty female characters on the screen and to reflect me, you know, my life growing up. So that’s a really strong driving force of mine. So everything I do is kind of motivated by that,” she says.

The passionate star is laser-focused on her career and achieving her goals, and while preparing for Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, she travelled with JK to New York, as the show is set in The Bronx. While she was there, the writer John Patrick Shanley agreed to meet for coffee. He’s won Oscars, Pulitzers, Tony Awards, Golden Globes and more, so Jacqui was grateful he made the time to answer their questions.

“[It] was so surreal, because here’s this incredible writer who’s shaped modern theatre and [worked] with Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman and Viola Davis… and we actually got a lot of his insight into him writing it, why he wrote it, the characters who were very personal to him,” Jacqui recalls.

“We actually then travelled to the Bronx and went to the area that he kind of grew up and got a feel for that culture,” she adds.

Jacqui calls her new play a “massive challenge”

Going from the screen to stage is no easy feat, especially when you’ve been working with multiple co-stars and storylines that don’t revolve around your character, like Jacqui had on Home and Away. She tells Chattr she was searching for something to push her out of her comfort zone.

“I’m so used to that beautiful big ensemble at Home and Away and having so many voices, whereas here it’s literally just JK and I,” Jacqui says. “It’s so intimate, we’re on the stage 100% of the play, where we never leave the stage. For that one hour and 15 [minutes] you’ve jsut got us the whole time, so there’s no way out for us.

“It’s a massive challenge, but that’s why I wanted to do it, because it is so different from Home and Away.”