TV Week: “Missing at Sea” E Street 10th November 1990

TV Week
10th November 1990

… To rest a knee!

There’s real drama behind the latest trauma of a favourite E Street character.

While E Street’s Lisa Bennett is shipwrecked somewhere with her latest boyfriend, the actress who plays the role, Alyssa-Jane Cook, is using the respite to recover from knee surgery.

“The reason for the shipwreck was so that I could have this surgery now,” Alyssa-Jane says.

“Tf I’d left it until I was older, it would have taken longer to repair and I could have suffered severe arthritis.”

The knee was hurt in a skiing accident some time ago.

“I was an avid skier,” Alyssa-Jane says. “Even after I did the damage I skied for another 10 months in Canada.”

But while Alyssa-Jane is “on the healing path now”, things aren’t looking so bright for her E Street character. Just as Lisa is recovering from the havoc wreaked by her brother Sonny (Richard Huggett), along comes another trauma.

The petite blonde is feeling down in the dumps when her latest boyfriend, wealthy
newspaper heir Michael Sturges (Graham Harvey), reappears on the scene and asks her to go with him to a yacht race near Tokyo.

“She says, ‘Okay’ and they sail into the sunset … literally,” Alyssa-Jane says.

But Lisa and Michael are shipwrecked, and most of Westside believes they are dead. Alyssa-Jane says part of the enjoyment of playing Lisa is that the character shares her own strength and get-up-and-go when it comes down to survival.

“But she is a much nicer person than I am, because she seems to have more feeling for the people around her,” Alyssa-Jane says. “There is a lot about Lisa I’d like to have in real life, like her ambition and drive. But I’m tired of the down side of her now. I think it’s time for her to be happy — and for people to get bored with seeing her smiling.

“Otherwise, she’ll end up in a psychiatric ward!” That’s if, of course, she’s not lost at sea forever.

Story: Garry Shelley
Picture: Michelle Day

Original content copyright TV Week.

Thanks to TV Week Appreciation Page.