When Lisette Reymer took up the much-coveted role of Newshub’s Europe Correspondent in 2020, she and cameraman Daniel Pannett were sent on an intense hostile training course.
For a week, the pair played out being hostages, protecting themselves from gunfire and being interrogated by gun-toting military officers. It all seemed so far-fetched, Lisette wondered when she would ever use any of the skills they were taught.
“We wore bullet-proof vests and helmets, with people pretending to throw grenades at you,” she recalls. “Now I look back and think it couldn’t have been more valuable for what was to come.”
The 28-year-old never imagined she would be a war correspondent. It was not on her radar. But she has spent most of 2022 finding the human focus in stories from war-torn Ukraine since the Russian invasion began last February.
Lisette’s updates from Ukraine have been “traumatic at times”.
When the Weekly catches up with her in Auckland, Lisette is home for a whirlwind two-week visit to attend the New Zealand Television Awards, where she was a finalist for Best TV Reporter.
She also decided to use the opportunity to surprise her family in Cambridge, who had no idea she was in the country. Needless to say, it was an emotional reunion.
“Mum is still squealing and hugging me,” says Lisette. “In fact, I won’t tell her about this interview either and she’ll see it in print and be like ‘LISETTE! Stop doing this to me!’ She will have a hernia.”
And how do her parents feel about their youngest child being in a war zone?
“They are surprisingly good with it, probably due to how much support and security we have there. They’re silent worriers because they know it does me no good to hear how stressed they might be.
“In fact, they don’t talk to me at all when I’m in Ukraine. Sometimes I’m like, ‘Uh, would it bother you to flick me one message?'” she says with a wry smile. “All these people are messaging me lovely things and I haven’t heard a peep from my mum or dad!”
Lisette and Daniel at the NZTV Awards, where Newshub picked up the Best News Coverage trophy.
Quick to laugh with an upbeat, can-do attitude, Lisette admits she is still processing the disturbing events and scenes she has witnessed reporting from the frontline.
Sometimes she has to remind herself it’s not a well-made film set because it doesn’t seem real.
“It can be traumatic at times… where you can’t access fuel reserves to leave. Or one night I was stuck outside in the dark during an air raid siren and had seven minutes to find an underground bomb shelter. Another night, I was in a hotel fire in Odessa where I got woken up by banging on our door.
“I do bawl my eyes out when it gets too much. And I think what has hit us most coming home to New Zealand is seeing people’s reactions to things we talk about very casually, such as filming human bones on the side of the road.
“Dan and I have lived in such a bubble that we don’t realise how weird it is to others,” she reflects. “It’s nice here not being triggered by little things that remind us of air-raid sirens – like turning a hairdryer on or a squeaky shower tap.”
Lisette and cameraman Dan have seen a lot in Ukraine.
She also admits to tearing up in interviews constantly. After approaching people at their most vulnerable, whose whole lives have been destroyed, it’s her instinct to want to hug and comfort them.
“Just because we’re journalists doesn’t mean we don’t have hearts or feel their pain. They’re being generous sharing their raw, raw stories, so we owe it to them to be humans back.”
The angriest she has felt towards the war was watching a child play in a missile crater, just a few metres from a playground. “I thought about all of my nieces and nephews playing in their playground,
and how much joy it brings them. And a missile comes down and strips children of that joy and their innocence.”
When asked what it has taught her about the human spirit, Lisette pauses before answering thoughtfully.
“It’s the desire for happiness and how people seek out positivity wherever they can, even in the darkest times. I remember seeing a parent buying their child an ice cream one day when the sun was out.
“Even with the trauma they were experiencing, I think they were desperately trying to find some joy and have a summer’s day,” she tells. “Even buskers in the street are out keeping spirits up. I can talk to somebody who looks quite smiley, and then find out that their dad and uncle have just died fighting in Mariupol.
“One day, I was speaking to a woman in Kiev, who was a beautician. She told me her way of helping was to travel around Ukraine to areas that had been badly hit and do women’s hair, nails and make-up, to make them feel normal and beautiful.
“That’s the amazing thing about Ukrainians. Yes, there are people fighting the war, but everyone in the country is thinking, ‘How can I help in some small way to bring joy?'”
“People seek positivity wherever they can, even in the darkest times,” tells Lisette.
Lisette describes herself as a naturally sunny, optimistic person, but this experience has made her even more so. She talks about filling up her “laughter tank” before each visit back to the war zone.
Usually on the journey to Ukraine, she and Daniel, 32, put music on and play Monopoly Deal or she binge-watches reality TV show The Kardashians.
“When we know we’re going into a grim, darker environment that’s going to be emotionally expensive, we have that in us because we’ve stocked up on the happy endorphins beforehand.
“I think people, when they meet me, expect me to be like this depressing person, but we are constantly reminded to celebrate the little things.”
Although her career has recently been defined by high-intensity reports giving incredible insight into the lives of battle-weary Ukrainians, in her early days as a journalist, Lisette was always doing “the lighter stuff”.
“I used to get so mad when people underestimated the value of a ‘fluff’ story at the end of a bulletin,” explains Lisette. “Because I always thought they were the hardest stories to do and people dismissed it because it wasn’t changing lives.
“To tell a light-hearted story is just as important. I never sought out the lead story. I just always wanted to tell stories that made people feel something – whether it’s really happy or really sad.”
Lisette concedes she has been a natural storyteller since childhood. Growing up as the youngest of Cambridge dairy farmers Garry and Marie-Jose Reymer’s five children, she wrote as an eight-year-old that she wanted to be a television journalist.
Growing up in Cambridge.
“My parents and my grandparents were news junkies. We never missed the 6pm news. It was the most important viewing slot. And my brother Bjorn, who is 10 years older, was at Broadcasting School in Christchurch and I wanted to be just like him.”
Bjorn had set up a little radio station hilariously-named Big Momma’s House in a tiny cupboard on the family’s farm. The children would take turns broadcasting on it after school. “The station had this small radius of five kilometres around our house. So we’d be like, ‘Tune into Big Momma’s House’ to everyone at school,” she grins.
“We’d do Big Momma jokes coming in and out of voice breaks – there were no ads obviously! We’d go to school and no one would be there to man the radio station, so Dad would put Pink Floyd on, then go out on the tractor and listen to it.
“I was very ratings-focused. I’d say to friends, ‘Hey, did you guys enjoy our jokes yesterday?’ And they’d reply, ‘No, we were doing our homework.’ And I’d go home and be like, ‘Hey guys, we need a team meeting about a rebrand,'” jokes Lisette.
Heading back to the UK, the intrepid reporter has no expectations about what other tumultuous events may occur.
After her experiences on the frontline, Lisette says, “People, when they meet me, expect me to be like this depressing person.”
“Who knows? There could be a nuclear war and how many more new prime ministers can the UK have? I’m so sick of Downing Street,” she adds.
“It’s funny because in the first few months of the job, I thought, ‘Oh, this has been a busy time’ and I expected it to cool off a little bit. But it’s maintained the pace with the Queen’s passing and the Russian invasion.
“So I am not expecting this year to be any quieter. My only aim is to just hold on.”
