How Bec Judd was shaped by her working-class upbringing
Rebecca Judd may be one of Australia’s most glamorous women, but in a rare interview has opened up on her humble childhood, revealing “we didn’t have much growing up and every dollar counted.”
Stellar
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Wherever model, entrepreneur and influencer Rebecca Judd goes, she’s likely to turn heads with her air of glamour and luxe vibe. But at home in Melbourne with four children, an interior design business and an activewear empire to manage, a decidedly down-to-earth Judd tells Stellar things are both simpler than they seem… and far more chaotic than she lets on. But if you think she’s desperate for a bit of rest, well, that can wait. As she joins a star-studded edition of The Amazing Race Australia, the “super competitive” Judd reveals why she has no qualms about throwing herself into the wilds of reality television, and reflects on the lessons she learnt from her working-class upbringing: “Be kind, be reliable, be honest, work hard, be humble. And never open your mouth unless you have something nice to say”
Every now and then, Rebecca Judd yearns for another baby. Then, just a moment later, she reconsiders. “It’s a very busy household already and when you’ve got four kids, someone is always sick,” Judd says, explaining that her family has just gone through yet another gastro outbreak at their home in Melbourne’s Bayside. “There’s always an issue somewhere. There’s always some kind of chaos and that’s just the reality of having four kids. And
I wouldn’t change it.”
Even though Judd insists the whirlwind of activity swirling in her household is mostly a happy one, her own chaos theory is proven when she’s forced, mid-preparation, to reschedule her Stellar shoot and interview at the eleventh hour, surrounded as she was by ailing daughter Billie, 9, and twin sons Tom and Darcy, 6.
“It was absolutely horrendous,” she says, recoiling at the recent memory of Darcy bringing home a stomach bug from school where, in scenes reminiscent of The Exorcist, he coated the house in germs. “And so, a few hours later, Billie went down with it, then Tom and Chris [Judd’s husband, a former AFL star],” she adds. “And then, of course, the mother gets it last. After cleaning up after everyone else for two days, I went down, too.”
Just when things were getting back on an even keel, their eldest son Oscar, 12, came home sick and the vicious cycle started all over again. “It’s just never-ending and now they all have snotty noses,” she says with a sigh over Zoom, her hair scooped back into a ponytail and her face free of make-up. “We were on our hands and knees scrubbing all weekend.”
Scenes like those are a far cry from the jetsetting and uber-luxurious lifestyle many assume Judd lives, particularly if they’re one of the 760K people who follow her well-curated Instagram feed. They’re also a chief reason why, rather than diving back into the realm of sleep deprivation and nappies, she is entering what she calls her “dog era”.
“Ever since I started telling people we were getting a puppy instead of having a baby, they have been telling me, ‘What are you doing? A puppy is so much harder than a newborn,’” she says. “Surely the dog can’t be more disruptive than Tom and Darcy Judd?” she further muses, referring to how her twins have wreaked havoc in the Spanish colonial house she had painstakingly renovated and filled with high-end art and furnishings. “Honestly,
at the start I was precious about it. And now, I’m just like, ‘Everything can be fixed, right?’”
Since she became a mum for the first time 12 years ago, Judd has become a master at maintaining timetables and schedules. It’s the only way to juggle running her activewear label, Jaggad (which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year), continuing her burgeoning interior design work and managing her children’s after-school activities.
Those organisational skills came to the fore when she and her younger sister, Kate Twigley, signed up for The Amazing Race Australia: Celebrity Edition. After two weeks of intensive planning – and a lot of help from friends and family – Judd took off to compete against celebrities such as Grant Denyer and his wife, podcaster Chezzi, and The Real Housewives Of Melbourne star Jackie Gillies and her husband, Silverchair drummer Ben. “My sister and I have been fans of The Amazing Race for so long, ever since the American one came out towards the end of high school,” Judd explains. “I remember we watched every episode together and we went, ‘If we ever did reality TV, that’s the one we would do.’”
While producers have courted Judd for other reality franchises in the past, she has always turned them down, partly because her children were too young but also because – in another defiance of public assumptions – she says she has never been interested in courting fame. For most of her life, Judd says, she has searched for stability and focused on keeping her family close.
Her parents, Hugh Twigley and Kerry Brown, moved to Australia from New Zealand in the late 1970s, before Judd and her sister, Kate, were born, to take advantage of the West Australian mining boom. “Mum’s side is Māori, so we did a lot of trips to New Zealand when we were kids,” Judd says. “My pop has a big farm, and we’d have all the uncles and aunties over to have a hāngī [a traditional Māori way of steaming food underground] every time we went over. No-one ever guesses that I’m Māori. No-one. Ever.”
After her parents separated, she and Kate divided their time between Perth and regional WA. “We didn’t have much growing up and every dollar counted, so we really respected our food, our home and our belongings,” she explains before adding with a laugh, “Apart from leaving my Barbie showbag on a bus in 1988, I don’t think I’ve ever lost anything in my life. I’m still annoyed about it. Can you tell?”
Although there wasn’t much in the way of material possessions for the Twigley girls, their mother provided an abundance of inspiration. “She always had dinner parties, friends over, big milestone parties and there was always music playing,” she recalls. “She cooked the yummiest dinners and taught Kate and I all the best yet simple lessons in life: be kind, be reliable, be honest, work hard, be humble and never open your mouth unless you have something nice to say.”
Growing up, Judd spent years in TV newsrooms watching her mum work as a director’s assistant and unit manager. Intrigued, she pursued journalism at Curtin University in Perth, but left after a year, uncomfortable chasing some of the heavier stories in her course. “It was a little deflating when I didn’t enjoy doing the degree, and was also pretty bad at it,” she admits.
While her romantic life was on the upswing with Chris, whom she first met in 2002 when he was the captain of the West Coast Eagles in Perth, she didn’t find her career groove until she started studying speech pathology. After Chris took the helm at Carlton in 2008, she transferred to Melbourne’s La Trobe University.
For her first few years in Melbourne, Judd juggled her speech pathology job at The Alfred hospital with a growing list of media opportunities, her worlds and interests colliding when she would stroll into the emergency department still sporting, as she recalls, “my lash extensions and full-on hair and make-up” from a modelling gig. After Oscar was born, it became harder to manage it all. “And so, I never went back to The Alfred, which was ironic that I had left that degree because I didn’t want to be on TV, then I ended up hosting Postcards [the travel show she fronted from 2011 until 2020] and presenting the weather at Nine News for all those years,” she reflects. “It’s funny how life comes full circle.”
But her mum was there to help, and when Tom and Darcy were born, Brown moved in for a year to help care for the children. Now back in WA, her mum is a FIFO (fly in, fly out) worker in the mines where, Judd enthuses, “Everyone thinks she’s so cool driving her massive trucks.”
The minefields are a world away from suburban Melbourne, and while Brown admits that it’s hard being so far from her daughter and grandchildren, she adds that Judd’s willingness to share snippets of her life online helps the family stay connected. “Working in a remote location doesn’t help, so it’s a real buzz to see what she and the kids are up to [on Instagram],” Brown tells Stellar. “We’re both time-poor, and throw in the time difference [and it’s even harder]. Social media is a blessing indeed.”
When she does come to Melbourne to visit her daughter, Brown says she feels right at home. “Except Bec is the mum and sometimes I feel like the child,” she concedes. “It’s always relaxed. Well, as relaxed as it can be with a full house. And Bec’s friends have become mine, too.”
Those friends – an entourage of work colleagues, school mums and women who Judd has met through football such as Nadia Bartel, Jessie Murphy and Kylie Brown – may enjoy some glamorous gatherings, as seen on social media, but Judd insists it’s not all front rows at fashion week or parties at Coachella. As she adds with a shrug, “I wouldn’t say it’s every week, maybe once a fortnight, we get together to just chill like normal mums.”
Judd also coaches Billie’s netball team, leaning on the tricks she learnt from playing in her youth and doing what she loves most: cheering on her sports-loving children. “Yes, I’m the mum shouting out from the sidelines,” she admits. “I can’t help it.” Like the rest of Australia, she says the family was glued to the TV watching the FIFA Women’s World Cup, an event she explains was particularly special for Billie “to see what women in sport can achieve and the positive impact it can have on an entire nation”.
Her daughter, who “runs and tackles just like her dad”, can now aspire to be a professional AFL player. “She is a little weapon, my Billie,” Judd says proudly. “Out of all of the kids, she’s probably the most naturally physically aggressive. I remember I posted a video on Instagram of her tackling all the boys in the backyard and, honestly, she just mows through the ball. She’s got a gift, that’s for sure.”
Brown says the same about Judd, who, when she wasn’t tearing up the netball court, had her nose in a book. “She was like an old soul who already knew the ropes for getting on in life,” Brown says. “She was never a follower, and I don’t recall her suffering from FOMO [fear of missing out]. I knew she would be fabulous at whatever she put her mind to.”
While Judd says a return to speech pathology isn’t out of the question, for now her children and businesses come first. She reduced her TV and radio commitments three years ago, but says The Amazing Race Australia was hard to refuse, especially as it’s a way for her to raise money for Impatient Advocacy: A Nicole Cooper Foundation, in honour of her close friend who lost her battle with bowel cancer in January.
The series also allows Judd a chance to show Australia a different side to the fashion-savvy glamazon we see strutting red carpets and posting on social media. “My sister and I are super competitive. We’re very sporty girls,” she explains. “We loved that it’s a whole show based on challenges and competition – that’s what spoke to us.”
With the series set to air in a matter of weeks, one has to presume that after two decades in the spotlight, surely Judd is well-prepared for the dangers of a reality TV edit and the inevitable negative attention the genre can attract? “Of course, there will be chatter,” she says. “But I’m 40 now and I’ve been doing this for a long time. And those challenges with social media aren’t unique to me. I had a chat with the other participants in the show in some of the downtime, and we discussed the other part of being on TV or the other side of being in the public eye. And everyone faces the same issues.”
The Amazing Race Australia: Celebrity Edition is coming to Network 10 and 10Play in October.
Originally published as How Bec Judd was shaped by her working-class upbringing
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