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With four Gold Logies, Lisa McCune is Australian television royalty. Known and loved for roles in shows like Blue Heelers and Sea Patrol, not to mention her impressive body of stage work, she is back on screens hosting Nine’s The Garden Hustle, in which, alongside landscape gardener Dave Franklin, she assists people looking to create their ideal garden.
Lisa McCune
Is the gardening phase a natural life cycle for a celebrity to move into: you reach a certain status in showbiz and then you move to the garden?
Very funny way of looking at it. You know, it’s really interesting, actually, because over lockdown down here in Melbourne, I had written up a page – because I spend a lot of time in my garden, I really love it. Since I bought my first place, gardens have been a big thing, even when I had, like, a little balcony in the apartment. But I actually wrote up the page and spoke to somebody about it and said I’d really like to do something, like Audrey Hepburn, she used to do these shows called Gardens of the World. And I have been reading a lot about Sunday Reed down here and her Heide garden and how it inspired painters. And I kind of had this idea that I’d love to go and visit gardens and take people on the journey to see some gardens with great stories behind them and great history because so many of them do, and people create gardens for so many different reasons, and I thought there was a really great story wrapped up in that.
But that’s not quite this show.
And then weirdly, before I did anything with that, (producer) Monica O’Brien happened to be talking to somebody and said, ohh, Lisa McCune loves gardens and she’s really into that. And that’s kind of how it came about.
So it’s not a total left-field pivot for you at all, this is something you were already into.
It doesn’t feel as though it’s outside my wheelhouse. It feels very much to me like, you know, it’s something that I love. So it’s kind of an extension of my personal life really. And it’s also the time commitment for me around, you know, family and the other stuff that I do in my life. It was, I think, a couple of weeks on the road. And I’m really hoping that we do it again because I really loved it. So yeah, I hope people really enjoy it when they see it.
As the title suggests, it’s a hustle – you’re racing to create these gardens – but it’s not a competition a la The Block, is it.
No, we’re not competing against anybody else. You’re sort of just competing against yourself really, because you’re given that time to try and achieve. You know your plan, so you’ve got planning time because the people on the show, a lot of them have got a vision and so they’ve planned it out and they’ve done an idea on paper and Dave kind of gives them a few instructions.
How much work have you put into your own garden?
Well, I sold a house over lockdown, coming out of lockdown, that had quite a substantial garden and now I have a secret hidden garden where I live, which is not as big but there’s a lot going on. But I’m about to do a build, so for me, I will be redoing my garden and I know what I like. And my Pinterest page is exploding. I think a beautiful garden actually really invokes creativity. I think that’s why I’m always quite an even personality really, because I spend a lot of time in my garden and I think it’s a reset place for me and whenever there’s stuff going on, I just go to my garden and it’s just soothing.
You’re in a notoriously tough, fickle industry. Are you at a stage in your career where you really can do what you like, or is it still a tough road to be an actor in Australia?
Oh God, yeah. I think it’s interesting that people sometimes think that, you know, the scripts are piling up at the door and there’s so much work. But you know, we don’t have the long-running series any more. We have a lot of people who’ve realised the magic of doing series television. Creating characters that go beyond a film length. So a lot of actors that normally do tread the ground of cinema and feature films, I think they’ll realise how wonderful making television actually is because it’s so great. You get to live with a character for a longer span.
But in this show, you have made a move away from that.
I have been fortunate in a country like Australia where I’ve been able to swing between doing some theatre and then doing some television. But over lockdown you start to realise things and you can get very caught up in only wanting to live in the one genre. But working with cameras and entertaining is kind of what I do, and I had to have a little chat to myself and go, why not move into those other areas. I’ve dabbled before, and I thought, well, this actually feels really right. It just felt right to step into that space.
How much acting is involved with a presenting job, where you’re being myself? Is it the same art or a totally different skill?
It’s really interesting, actually, because I look at all of the people who I think do it so well. You know, the Sonia Krugers and the Catriona Rowntrees, and you know, those people who don’t necessarily read auto-cues, who just actually are fabulous presenters, and it’s a skill in itself. And that is not my normal stomping ground, but Monica’s structures are such that it’s kind of a conversation with people, and I’m really good at that.
The Garden Hustle screens at 7.30pm Saturdays on Nine from November 18.
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