Lisa Riley is supporting a new lung cancer awareness campaign, remembering her late Emmerdale co-star Leah Bracknell, who died of the disease aged 55 in 2019. The Bury-born actress, known for playing Mandy Dingle in the Leeds-filmed ITV soap, starred alongside Leah, who played Zoe Tate, the daughter of Frank and stepdaughter of Kim, and the first lesbian character in a British soap.
Leah appeared in the role for 16 years, arriving in 1989 and leaving in 2005. She was nominated for the 2002 National Television Award for Most Popular Actress and won the 2006 British Soap Award for Best Exit. She also had television roles in Judge John Deed, A Touch of Frost, The Royal Today and DCI Banks, as well as performing on stage and in pantomime.
Leah Bracknell's cancer diagnosis and death
Leah was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer in September 2016. Less than a year later, it was announced that her targeted biological therapy had stopped working and that she had been surviving on experimental treatments for several months. The mum-of-two, who was a trained yoga teacher as well as a TV actress, confirmed before her death that she was on an immunotherapy clinical trial which kept her cancer stable. She tragically died in September 2019.
Leah experienced breathlessness which became so severe that she found it difficult to use the stairs. Her symptoms developed quickly, and her diagnosis came after she was rushed to hospital with a heart problem, which was subsequently found to be a side effect of her lung cancer.
Campaign launch and new research
Lisa has remembered Leah as she fronts the new lung cancer awareness campaign after losing both her and her grandmother to the disease. The campaign comes as new research reveals widespread misconceptions around who can get lung cancer and worrying delays in seeking help.
Lung cancer remains the UK's biggest cancer killer, with nearly 40,000 people diagnosed in England each year. Almost one in 10 people diagnosed have never smoked, and lung cancer is also the biggest cancer killer of women in the UK.
"I didn't realise just the enormity of how high the death rate was," Lisa told the Manchester Evening News in an exclusive interview. "I've worked with breast cancer before and I, hand on my heart, always believed it was breast cancer and it's not; lung cancer is the biggest killer and especially in women."
Rapid Response Pathway in Leeds
The new 'Don't Delay – Every Breath Matters' campaign is being launched off the back of new research revealing widespread misconceptions and stigma around lung cancer. Commissioned by specialist cancer care provider GenesisCare, the research reveals that 70% of people are unaware of all the signs and symptoms of lung cancer, while nearly half (49%) don't know that those who have never smoked can still develop the disease.
Speaking about Leah, Lisa shared: "Take yoga, whenever we saw Leah and every day filming with her, she'd be going to teach a yoga class, or she'd be, going to do her own practice in yoga. She would go to retreats, and what do you think about when you think about yoga? Breathwork, you know, and this whole idea that someone like Leah, who didn't smoke, who was healthy as you could possibly be, so young, 'fit', and she passed away from lung cancer."
She added: "If that's not more obvious than why this campaign's so important, I don't know what it is, because it's, it's silent and nasty, we've got to be honest that it can creep upon anybody. So the sooner with the diagnosis of anything. I've seen people at work who have just been like, 'Oh, it's just a cough', or you can hear people saying, 'Oh, I've put my heating on. It's this time of year'. If that cough stays around for three weeks, there could be something underlying, so don't ignore it."
Lisa is supporting the campaign alongside the launch of a new Lung Cancer Rapid Response Pathway, which will be available at a new specialist cancer centre launching in Leeds in January. The service aims to transform the speed of access and care coordination, helping patients reach a diagnosis and treatment plan as quickly as possible.
Lisa also spoke of Leah's death being a shock. "It was unbelievable," she said. "Again, it was one of those moments you go, 'No, it can't. Leah can't have passed away'. Even on diagnosis, because you still saw that electricity in her eyes. On-screen, her eyes were electric. You wanted to watch, and she was not only a phenomenal actress. She was a really giving person."
She added: "She gave me so much advice when I was young that I've carried through, and I always think, if she knew now that the person that I am sat here now, I think she'd be really proud that I was carrying this campaign on for her, fully."
Lisa also thinks it's "incredible" that soaps like Emmerdale are able to draw attention to real-life matters, such as cancer diagnoses. "We're hitting millions. When we did the production day with GenesisCare last week, I was actually saying to the girls, I really want to speak to my bosses because again, because of what I've learned during this campaign. We're hitting 1000000s night after night after night, we're in people's homes, even if they're behind the cooker, making Spag Bol for the family, being seen in a character whom they adore, like Cain [Dingle], it will help, and of course, as we know with men, they get checked."
She added: "I've had people stopping me in the street; I was at Leeds Station, and I was at London at King's Cross, and they were all mentioning Rosie [Bentham]'s eating disorder [as Gabby Thomas]. So that's why it's so important that we tell these stories within soap operas, because actually we're portraying real-life people who fundamentally live next door to you."
