Lisa McCune makes TV return in new comedy about marriage
LISA McCune and have reprised their role as a married couple from the 2013 TV series It’s a Date for Ten’s new sitcom, How To Stay Married — and it’s still comedic gold.
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YOU could be forgiven for thinking Lisa McCune had turned her back on television recently. But the four-times Gold Logie Award winning actress is back on primetime television ditching drama for comedy to star in Ten’s new laugh-in, How To Stay Married.
At 47, the mother of three teenagers says she had a much more important role to play on the homefront.
“I didn’t really make the decision (to take a break), it was just the way things fell,” she tells BW Magazine.
“But I did also really see a need to be at home as much as I could, so it was timely. My kids would say they didn’t need me around more, but I loved that time.
“I’m in the terrifying uncharted territory of teenagers and I struggle with how to be a good mum without being too much of a helicopter parent.
“My kids are awesome and I love being a mum but it’s actually starting to feel like they need me around like when they were little.”
Apart from a handful of appearances in a few ABC TV shows like Warriors and The Divorce, audiences have seen very little of McCune since her stint on Reef Doctors in 2013. And it’s been 25 years since we were introduced to the beloved character of Constable Maggie Doyle on Blue Heelers which had her lauded as the darling of Australian television.
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But it was one single phone call from her actor and comedian pal that put her back in the television spotlight. When Helliar rang to ask her if she would reprise her role from his 2013 TV series, It’s A Date, she jumped at the chance.
“It was such a pleasant phone call when I heard the show was going to happen,” McCune says of the characters she and Helliar played on It’s A Date. “Greg and Em had a kid in It’s a Date and now time’s gone on and the kids are older. They are established with a mortgage and the kids are old enough now that Em wants to find her identity, but as a result poor Greg loses his.
“It’s a classic role reversal.”
The actress, who has appeared in a number of stage productions including Cabaret, Guys and Dolls and The King and I, says it’s refreshing to see local content being made in the face of streaming television subscriptions, reality TV and on demand programming.
She says it’s great to see so many old Aussie TV shows, like SeaChange and Wentworth, being remade, though she has ruled out a return of Maggie Doyle who took five bullets as she left Blue Heelers in 2006.
“A lot of the time, we reinvent the wheel in a different way,” she says about the various remakes.
“Look at the success of Wentworth, it shows you don’t have to do things from scratch.
“Is it because we need the material?” she ponders.
“Our audiences now are really savvy, they know the difference with good drama, it needs to be sophisticated, compelling and really good for them to switch on. There’s lots of talk of reality and binge-watching this or that. I think it’s nice to have a show (like How To Stay Married) where you have to tune in each week for a new episode.”
McCune says what she loved most about How To Stay Married was how real some of the subject matter was, with plenty in there the now-single mother of three could well relate to.
“There’s an episode where Greg and Em go to her high school reunion and there’s all the crazy conflict with boys she used to go out with,” she says.
“It’s real life stuff. My character is looking for herself and who she is, and I get that too.”
She jokes about the positioning of How To Stay Married following on from The Bachelorette on the Thursday night line-up.
“It’s a lovely postscript to The Bachelorette, it shows the before and after of a relationship,” she laughs.
“Though there’s more drama on The Bachelorette.”
How To Stay Married airs Thursday, 8.40pm, on Ten.