‘I don’t consider them my friends anymore’: Kip Wightman on falling out with Nova co-hosts
After an upsetting divorce and a gut-wrenching split from his Nova breakfast co-hosts, Kip Wightman has finally found happiness - on and off the air.
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Every part of this moment reminds Kip Wightman he’s finally found it.
He’s waiting with his son Rafael, 4, for their takeaway order from their Mexican favourite, Guzman y Gomez.
Latino music reverberates through the restaurant and Raf jumps up and asks his dad to dance with him. The old Kip would never have entertained the idea. The Kip who for some time struggled to see the joy in life as he battled through his darkest moments. The Kip who in 2021 went through a divorce and quit his longstanding radio career with Nova.
He was the man who tried desperately to control everything only for it to crumble.
But the new Kip, the one who had to fall hard, learnt his most valuable lesson of all, to let go. It’s led him here, knowing what truly makes him happy and, right now, that’s shimmying through the fast food chain with Raf.
“Old me would have been so embarrassed … I was a lot more conscious of trying to be cool and how did I look and things like that … but now I’m like, I don’t care … who gives a stuff,” he says. “That’s what’s changed me because all of a sudden I’m like, ‘yeah, let’s dance.’
“I’ve let go of a lot of those things in the last year, I always find the person who doesn’t care what anyone is thinking is always having the most fun.” Now that person is Wightman.
The radio personality, 47, has endured a tumultuous couple of years but says he’s come out of it a new and happier man.
Wightman has a new partner, Nyomie Essa, 36, and job, co-hosting the Robin & Kip breakfast show on KIIS 97.3FM alongside Robin Bailey (and Terry Hansen until he announced he was retiring in October) and is happy to have left behind – how he remembers it – “the year to forget”.
In 2021, he was going through a divorce with his wife of four years, and Raf’s mother, Amber Preiksa, and at the same time, his professional life was spiralling downward. In October that year, Wightman called it quits unexpectedly from Nova’s popular breakfast show, Ash, Kip, Luttsy & Susie, a position he had held for 15 years, and left immediately.
It was a messy exit with Wightman speaking out about his misery among the team he once thrived in. Two years on, Wightman wishes things had gone differently.
“I wouldn’t say I left on good terms with everyone,” he says.
“It was a long time to spend and work together to not have a proper goodbye or conversation about it.”
He’s had “a little bit” of contact since with his co-hosts, mostly Luttsy who he is often in touch with, but says some relationships have not recovered. “If I see Ash and Susie out, I’ll say ‘hello’ and will smile politely but certainly I don’t consider them my friends any more.
“I was going through a divorce obviously, so for me, it was just like I was at a real emotional low and that’s when you need your friends to gather around you, not exclude you.”
It’s disappointing, he says, deflated after spending countless years as an unstoppable team often topping the ratings.
“The thing with radio is you spend so much time together, you know more about them than you do some of the closest people in your life,” he says. “There was that feeling of not being listened to and being excluded from the show a lot, that kind of made me feel like I had to leave.
That didn’t feel like the right way to treat someone who has been a friend and a big part of your life, to exclude them from conversations then make them feel like they were not part of the clique anymore. The way it all ended wasn’t the way I would have liked it to.”
But Wightman is swift to declare there’s no resentment towards his former co-hosts and he’s moved on.
“I’m not bitter about it because of the fact I’m much happier now,” he says. “I think there’s probably comfort for everyone in that it’s been for the best. It’s not the way I wanted it to end but at the same time, it’s given me a chance to actually spread my wings. Now I feel like I’m doing what I do best again.”
Three months after leaving Nova, Wightman was offered a rare position to take over as co-host on 97.3FM’s breakfast show.
In serendipitous timing, Bob Gallagher was stepping away after 16 years on the show and it was an opportunity too good to refuse, Wightman says.
It did, however, take him time to find his place but he says he’s found his voice again.
“It (my confidence) definitely wasn’t there straightaway because the team at KIIS had been doing their own thing for a long time as well,” he says. “We had to work out how we could do it together.
“They (Robin and Terry) were really good at letting go of old ideas and saying, ‘Let’s give it a go’ to new ideas.
“Robin and Terry (were) just so generous with their lack of ego. Neither of them cared who is telling the story or who gets the laugh or any of those things. I’ve never worked with people that are so generous with that and it’s really nice. It’s a release of tensions when you work with people that are not worried about that side of things.”
Wightman’s appreciation for Bailey and Hansen is strong and he credits them for helping him rebuild.
“When you’re talking to someone who is making eye contact with you and listening, that’s a confidence booster,” he says.
“That was one of the things that was happening towards the end at Nova, sometimes you would tell a story and you would look around the room and you’re like, ‘OK, people are literally on their phones or not listening at all’.
“That just destroys you. You start getting in your head, ‘Am I boring?’
“Just having people that are attentively listening, that’s probably the main difference.”
Wightman has made no secret of wanting to overthrow his former Nova co-hosts from their winning streak with Ash, Luttsy and Susie O’Neill recently topping the breakfast show ratings in Brisbane in the sixth survey of the year, released in October.
They were followed closely by B105’s Stav, Abby and Matt in second place and Robin, Terry and Kip came in at fourth. However, KIIS 97.3FM stormed up the overall radio rankings to claim second spot, just 0.1 per cent behind Nova 106.9, overtaking popular heavyweights B105 and Triple M.
Not always being at the top has been humbling for Wightman, he says, but he’s learnt there’s more to life than winning.
Because at Nova, he knew what it was to win big, but towards the end of 2020, he soon felt what it was like to lose it all.
While he was losing his way at Nova, his personal life was also suffering and his four-year marriage to Preiksa ended.
It consumed Wightman with guilt that he’d failed their son.
“I wanted to have a ‘regular’ family, that was the goal, so at first when that was obviously not going to happen there was a massive feeling of failure and feeling like I’ve let him down,” he says.
But just when he was expecting everything to get worse, he was thrown a lifeline and met Essa, a senior manager at PwC, at his lowest.
“When she first came into my life, I was still pretty shattered from a lot of things from my divorce,” he says.
“I was heartbroken and confused and still felt so down on myself for not being able to keep my family together for Rafi’s sake at least.
“That was a rough six months and followed not long after by having to leave Nova.
“There was a year to forget there.”
Wightman met Essa out exercising about six months after his relationship ended and the pair decided to become running partners. He says she helped turn his life around.
“I really wasn’t ready to have a relationship but at the same time knew she was such a great girl,” he says.
“She’s been such a help for me just getting my life back in order. She’s an angel that just came in and made my life so much better.”
Navigating their relationship alongside shared custody of Raf with his ex-wife isn’t without its challenges though, with Wightman recently breaking down on air opening up about the struggles of co-parenting.
He quoted Raf telling him how he wanted what his friend from daycare has, “A mum and dad. And they’re in the same house. They live together. And sometimes they pick him up together, I want that.” Wightman was overcome with emotion saying, “I just let him down. I can’t stand it.”
He knows there’s still a way to go but has found comfort in Essa allowing him to see a future again. The couple have settled into life in their Bulimba home, which they hope one day to fill with more children.
“It’s great to be even thinking about that (having kids) again because that was one of my things when I was getting divorced, I wanted Raf to be part of a bigger family and thought that couldn’t happen,” he says.
“Of course, it can happen and hopefully it will. We haven’t started trying yet but it’s definitely on my to-do list.”
A couple of years ago nobody could have told Wightman this would be his future; how a bold move to quit would be the best decision he made; how he would find what he always wanted but never knew how to get and how the answer to it all would become so clear.
Happiness was always right in front of him, he just had to let go to find it.
“As soon as you said the word happiness, I thought of Raf,” he says.
“Watching him having fun has brought me an incredible amount of happiness.
“He looks at things with wonder and fun and makes me see things that way again. I love watching the world through his eyes.”
The shift pulled Wightman out of the dark and into a world full of light where he’s the man that will always say yes to a dance.
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