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Stuart Neilson is a fictional character in the New Zealand soap opera ''Shortland Street'' who was portrayed by Martin Henderson as part of the original cast up until early 1995. The character's three years on the soap exhibited several major story lines as well as social commentary on youth, religion and mental illness. Stuart was introduced alongside mother, Marj (Elizabeth McRae) and father, Tom Neilson (Adrian Keeling) and brothers, Darryl (Mark Ferguson) and Damien (Mark Ferguson) who appeared on sporadic stints and eldest brother Patrick (uncredited actor) who appeared for a single guest appearance. The character was generally well received with Henderson winning the "Best Male Dramatic Performance in a Television Show" in the 1993 New Zealand Television and Film Awards. The character has since become iconic after leaving in 1995. ==Creation and casting== With the intention of creating a diverse and racially sensitive cast for a New Zealand soap opera, Caterina De Nave, Bettina Hollings and Jason Daniel decided to incorporate two teenage heart throbs to draw in the teenage audience. The characters of Stuart and Nick were created with the intention of Nick being a drug smoking rebel whilst Stuart was to be an articulate homosexual.〔 The character was written as part of a family unit consisting of himself, his father Tom (Adrian Keeling), mother Marj (Elizabeth McRae) and several recurring brothers. This again allowed more relevance to the audience and a greater chance of drawing in a diverse audience.〔 Martin Henderson was in his final year of high school when he auditioned and won the role over 900 other contenders. Oliver Driver also auditioned for the role and ended up getting the role of Mike Galloway several years later. Stuart debuted in the first episode with the gay storyline set to be exposed when female character – Kirsty Knight (Angela Dotchin), made moves on Stuart.〔 However the character of Nick as portrayed by Karl Burnett was vastly different from the characters original badboy synopsis and was hastily rewritten to suit Burnett's more comedic portrayal.〔 However this left viewers with only one heart throb on screen and a nervous Television New Zealand requested the character was rewritten to be straight so that the show remained appealing to the target audience of young females.〔 However, on screen Stuart was shown to be rebuffing Kirsty's advances and writers quickly rewrote the character's backstory so that rather than being gay, he was heavily religious and celibate.〔 In 1994 Henderson began to tire of the character's lack of diversity nor challenge and began to feel the character was becoming one-dimensional.〔 He quit the show to pursue a film career. The abrupt departure of Henderson was leaked to the press and there began to be speculation that Stuart would leave the show following the 1994 December cliffhanger.〔 Some storylines that were suggested by media included the idea of; Stuart winning Kirsty over Lionel and marrying before fleeing the country and also a series of episodes that would see Stuart become a priest and flee.〔 None of the stories came to fruition and the character made his last appearance on 27 February 1995. Producers discussed bringing back Henderson in 1998 as part of the write off of the Kirsty Knight character, however Henderson ended up not returning. Henderson was asked to reprise the role for the show's 15th anniversary in 2007, but declined due to a busy workload. However he expressed interest in returning in the future. In 2014 Henderson dismissed a suggestion by a journalist to return to the soap, but acknowledged the "exciting times" he had during his 3 years on screen. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Stuart Neilson」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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