I lost Mum to cancer but I won’t have gene test like Mandy Dingle
Lisa Riley on why she chooses not to know despite soap plot
As Emmerdale’s Mandy Dingle, Lisa Riley has been through plenty of hardhitting storylines. But none have hit home quite so much as ones shown this week.
Tonight viewers will see the Dingle clan being warned they could carry a faulty cancer-causing gene, and should be tested. Lisa was told she might carry the same gene in real life, after she lost her beloved mum Cath to breast cancer, 12 years ago.
But unlike the soap characters, Lisa has remained adamant she will never be tested. And even as she’s raising awareness of the issue on the soap, she remains defiant.
“It’s my life and I don’t want to have that test done,” Lisa explains.
“We’ve had years of conversation about it at Emmerdale, long before this storyline, and people have said to me, ‘But Lisa, with your history and your gene pool, why would you not do it?’ I reply, ‘Because I don’t need to do it.’ I just want to be me and live my life from day to day.”
Lisa, 47, lost her mum Cath to breast cancer aged 58, in 2012.
Two great-grandmothers also had breast cancer, and she lost three grandparents to other cancers.
“Awareness is very important and I do have an elected mammogram every year for my peace of mind, but not having the test is my choice,” she says. “It’s my business.
“I love the fact that we are portraying this on telly as many people still might not be aware.
“It’s wonderful to know that we will be teaching the audience about it, but personally, I don’t want to know.”
In last night’s episode Chas Dingle (Lucy Pargeter) told the Dingles she had been tested and found she had the faulty version of the BRCA2 gene, which has caused her breast cancer.
She immediately told her family to also get tested.
As famously highlighted by Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie, faults in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes significantly raise the risk of a woman developing breast and ovarian cancer, and of a man developing male breast cancer and prostate or pancreatic cancer.
Most women have a 15% chance of developing breast cancer in their lifetime but that rises to 40-85% for women with the faulty BRCA2 gene and 65-85% for women with the faulty BRCA1 gene.
There is also a 50% of passing on the gene to their children.
Lisa, an ambassador for the charity Breast Cancer Now, says cancer-themed scenes have been hard to film.
She says: “I have visions of my mum losing her hair, when clumps and clumps would be on the pillow.
“It broke me and it broke my mum. It broke my mum a lot more than the actual mastectomy.
“It’s agony to
We will be teaching audience about it, but I don’t want to know
LISA RILEY ACTRESS ON HER GENE TEST ATTITUDE
think of... but I’ve lived this story all my life, therefore I have to do it justice.”
Lisa and her mum Cath shared a close bond.
Cath backed her dreams of being an actor, taking her to Oldham Theatre Workshop when she was nine and
driving her to film
studios as she began to get acting work, until she joined Emmerdale at 19.
Family has always meant everything to Lisa. She remains close to dad Terry and brother Liam and the grief over her mum’s death can still overwhelm her. Lisa, who grew up in Bury, Gtr Manchester, now lives in Yorkshire with musician fiance Al.
But though they became engaged
six years ago, Lisa says it’s now unlikely they will ever tie the knot.
She told Emmerdale co-star Dominic Brunt (Paddy Kirk) that his planned wedding speech would never be used as getting hitched no longer seemed important.
Lisa spent six years in Emmerdale, then had an 18-year break during which she reached the semi-finals of Strictly, was in Bafta-winning drama Three Girls, replaced Jeremy Beadle as host of You’ve Been Framed! and was a Loose Women panellist. But she has no regrets about re-joining the soap in 2019.
She says of popular Mandy: “It’s still the part from heaven!”
Emmerdale is on Virgin Media One weekdays at 7.30pm