Lisa Faulkner: ‘ EastEnders? Of course I said yes!’
She won’t be using her cookery skills in Kathy’s Café, but Lisa Faulkner is set to put the cat among the Albert Square pigeons…
Lisa, 45, is mum to daughter Billie, 10, whom she adopted with thenhusband, actor Chris Coghill in 2006. These days, she’s happy with TV cook and MasterChef judge John Torode, 51, after the pair met on the show in 2010. Now, the pretty actress is all set for Albert Square – but that doesn’t mean she’ll be hanging up her apron, she says!
We’ve got used to you being a cook. What tempted you to join EastEnders?
I’ve always said if a good role came in, I’d think about it. Then my agent rang and said, ‘ EastEnders want to see you, please don’t say no.’ And the more I found out about my character, Fi Browning, I thought, ‘I’d be a fool to turn her down.’ Sometimes you have to just jump in, so that’s what I did.
So tell us about her…
She’s a businesswoman. She’s quite posh, and she’s very well dressed, which is obviously nice! She knows what she wants and she’s very good at getting it. She’s come to Walford to sort out the pub, so at the moment, there’s a lot of business speak that I don’t understand, so I keep asking my boyfriend, John, ‘ What does this mean?’
Do you think there’s any romance on the horizon for her?
I have no idea! I was having drinks with someone the other day and they were going, ‘I bet you go with Jack,’ and I was like, ‘I really don’t know.’ No one believes me, but I haven’t
got a clue.
What does John think about your new role?
He said, ‘That’s great, that’s ace, that’s just so brilliant.’ I thought he might be, ‘Oh, so I’ve lost you to EastEnders.’ But it turns out he is a massive fan. They gave me the cards of all the characters to learn, and we put them out on the kitchen bench and he was like, ‘They are in that family, they live there.’ It was like bingo, where he knew all the answers. And he loves helping me learn my lines.
Has he asked for a cameo? Not yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised. He said, ‘Maybe I could come in and meet you for lunch.’ I replied, ‘I don’t think it’s really like that.’ Your daughter, Billie, is 10 years old now. Is she proud of her famous mum? She actually said to me, ‘It is going to be so annoying now you’re in EastEnders, as people at school will know who you are!’ I didn’t let her watch it while she was growing up, as it tackles some really hard subjects. But you can’t hide children from anything – so I probably will now. So, were you nervous on your first day on set? I wasn’t nervous – I was absolutely terrified! I loved EastEnders as a teenager, but I hadn’t watched it for a long time. And then, of course, I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I’m in the Vic.’ But I’ve been an actor since I was 19 and I’m 45 now, so it is like putting on your favourite pyjamas. Within two minutes I was like, ‘Ah, I know how to do this.’ Had you worked with any of the cast before? Yes, quite a few, actually. I did a show called What’s Cooking? a few years back, and I interviewed Bonnie Langford [Carmel] and Natalie Cassidy [Sonia]. Will you be checking Twitter to see what people think of your performance in EastEnders? Twitter is a funny place. It can be lovely and it can be really, really horrible. I think people forget you are a real person with feelings, so I will probably stay away from it. Do you have any unfulfilled ambitions left? Well, definitely not dancing, and definitely not ice-skating. I would really like to open my own deli café – just 30 covers. John told me, ‘They don’t make any money,’ but I just love feeding people.