The 1990s role Isla Fisher has always dreamed of reprising: “Wouldn’t it be hilarious?”
When your first big movie is the live-action Scooby-Doo, you might think there’s nowhere left to go, but that certainly wasn’t the case for Isla Fisher.
Her role as Mary Jane, the aptly named love interest of Shaggy, was the first time most international audiences got a glimpse of her. In the 24 years since then (yes, you really are that old), she has gone from strength to strength: romcoms, thrillers, blockbusters, animated hits, she’s done it all. The only foot she’s really put wrong is marrying Sacha Baron Cohen, but we’ll forgive her for this one.
Prior to her Hollywood explosion, Fisher did as so many of her fellow Australians have done (except Jacob Elordi) and worked on a soap opera. While the likes of Russell Crowe and Kylie Minogue started on Neighbours, she joined Chris Hemsworth as a famous alum of the rival show, Home and Away.
For 345 episodes spread across three years, Fisher played Shannon Reed, a young woman whose storylines revolved around an absent mother, an eating disorder, and her bisexuality.
You might think that Fisher would be too big for Home and Away these days, but you’d be wrong. According to an interview she gave to Yahoo! Lifestyle in 2021, she wouldn’t just entertain the idea of returning to the soap, she’d actively welcome it.
“Of course I’ve thought about it!” she confessed, “I’ve thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be hilarious?’ But then the reality of it is, obviously, you have to give lots of notice, and then it gets written in, and then you have to commit. But obviously it would be fun just to sort of like, walk by with a surfboard or something at some point.”
Shannon’s departure from Home and Away in 1997 is still talked about by fans of the show. After starting a seemingly healthy relationship with local doctor Lachlan Fraser, played by Richard Grieve, her life is turned upside down by the return of Rachel Blake’s Mandy Thomas, a novelist and the former object of her affections. After weighing up her options, Shannon chooses to follow her heart and depart from Summer Bay with Mandy.
If Fisher did ever return to her roots, she wouldn’t be the first to do so, as Sarah Michelle Gellar returned to All My Children 16 years after she last played Kendall Hart, albeit as a different character, and Julianne Moore played half-sisters Sabrina and Frannie Hughes for three years on As the World Turns, returning as the latter for a one-off spot in 2010. As for those ‘Down Under’, Margot Robbie, who appeared as Donna Feldman in Neighbours between 2008 and 2011, made a cameo in a 2022 episode.
Soap operas are often derided as a lower form of entertainment, but they have been responsible for giving some of the most popular actors of numerous generations their big break, so it’s no wonder that Fisher still looks back on her Home and Away days so fondly. Without them, she wouldn’t be where she is today.
