When Lisa McCune’s family – and most of the world – went into isolation in March, her 14-year-old daughter Remy announced an ambitious plan to watch every episode of Blue Heelers, the 1990s cop drama that made her mum Australia’s sweetheart and a four-time TV Week Gold Logie winner. Remy’s proposed TV marathon sounds like a sweet act of daughterly devotion, but Lisa has no delusions.
“She’ll just bag me,” says the 49-year-old actor, laughing. “She’ll just go, ‘Oh Mum, you’re so bad!’ She adores me, I know she does, but they like giving me a hard time as well.”
Such is life in a family full of teenagers. As Lisa chats to The Weekly on the phone (our shoot was done previously), Remy and 16-year-old Oliver are remote learning, their schools shut down by the coronavirus pandemic, while 18-year-old uni student Archer is holed up at home too, enlisted to help his mum in the garden. Like most parents around the country, Lisa is trying to keep her kids busy, calculating the household toilet paper requirements and contemplating an uncertain future.
She had arrived home in Melbourne only a few days earlier from Sydney, where the acclaimed Bell Shakespeare production of Hamlet (in which she plays Gertrude) has shut down. It was the last show to leave the Sydney Opera House. “There was something very eerie,” she says, “about this almighty icon going dark.”
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Hitting a nerve
Regulating the vagus nerve with its links to depression, anxiety, arthritis and diabetes - could aid physical and mental wellbeing.
Take me to the river
With a slew of new schedules and excursions to explore, the latest river cruises promise to give you experiences and sights you won’t see on the ocean.
The last act
When family patriarch Tom Edwards passes away, his children must come together to build his coffin in four days, otherwise they will lose their inheritance. Can they put their sibling rivalry aside?
MEET RUSSIA'S BRAVEST WOMEN
When Alexei Navalny died in a brutal Arctic prison, Vladimir Putin thought he had triumphed over his most formidable opponent. Until three courageous women - Alexei's mother, wife and daughter - took up his fight for freedom.
The wines and lines mums
Once only associated with glamorous A-listers, cocaine is now prevalent with the soccer-mum set - as likely to be imbibed at a school fundraiser as a nightclub. The Weekly looks inside this illegal, addictive, rising trend.
Jenny Liddle-Bob.Lucy McDonald.Sasha Green - Why don't you know their names?
Indigenous women are being murdered at frightening rates, their deaths often left uninvestigated and widely unreported. Here The Weekly meets families who are battling grief and desperate for solutions.
Growing happiness
Through drought flood and heartbreak, Jenny Jennr's sunflowers bloom with hope, sunshine and joy
"Thank God we make each other laugh"
A shared sense of humour has seen Aussie comedy couple Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall conquer the world. But what does life look like when the cameras go down:
Winter baking with apples and pears
Celebrate the season of Australian apples and pears with these sweet bakes that will keep the midwinter blues away.
Budget dinner winners
Looking for some thrifty inspiration for weeknight dinners? Try our tasty line-up of low-cost recipes that are bound to please everyone at the table.
