Sophie Monk: ‘Everyone was obsessed with my weight’

As she returns to TV screens in “the most certain job she’s ever had”, Sophie Monk fires up about how for years she was either considered “too thin” or “too fat” - and reveals why she has no regrets about her Bardot days.

“I owe a lot to Love Island,” says Monk, who describes the TV role as her “first certain job”. Picture: Steven Chee for Stellar

Considering that Sophie Monk achieved instant fame from a reality series that thrust her into the pop spotlight as one-fifth of girl group Bardot, her 23 years since as a singer, actor and TV host have been remarkably noteworthy for their steady, upward trajectory. Now happily married to husband Joshua Gross – all the while hosting Love Island Australia, which

she describes as her “first certain job” – Monk talks to Stellar about entering the most fulfilling phase of her life

When Sophie Monk last appeared on the cover of Stellar, she was accompanied by her husband, Joshua Gross, giddy in love on their wedding day during their secret, at-home nuptials. While 18 months have passed since then, the flirty rapport the couple have shared since they first met in 2018 lingers, Monk insisting they’re still very much in the honeymoon phase.

“I know people whinge about their partner, but not me,” she says. “It’s the best ever. It feels like family and it’s a lovely feeling. And we’ve got our son, Bluey, too.”

Read the full interview in this weekend’s edition of Stellar.

She laughs quickly, lest anyone get the wrong idea about their golden retriever. Having left Bluey in the care of her in-laws while filming the latest season of Love Island Australia in sun-drenched Mallorca in Spain, she admits she suffered from separation anxiety. “Every day, we would get videos of him, waking up, everything, and I would watch it 18 times,” Monk admits to Stellar. “The worst thing is, some of the people I work with have had babies and I didn’t ever see their videos – but they saw my dog videos.”

It was on the flight home from filming the first season of the reality dating series that Monk – fresh from her break-up with Stu Laundy, her final rose recipient on The Bachelorette Australia a year earlier – found herself seated by chance next to Gross, a charming medical supplies sales manager.

“I owe a lot to Love Island,” she says with a smile.

That’s also why, despite taking delight in the antics of each Love Island cast she meets, Monk says that hosting the series hasn’t made her yearn for the single life in any way. “Only because I was single on and off until I was 38,” she explains. “You know how you think the grass might be greener? I know a lot of married people are like, ‘Oh gosh, I am over it!’ I’m not, because I’ve waited so long. You know the grass isn’t greener when you [get married] older – you’re grateful for it.”

“Look, we weren’t earning a lot of money, but before that I was earning no money. I was singing in pubs with a band,” Monk says of her time with Bardot. Picture: Steven Chee for Stellar

She also appreciates hosting the Nine Network series for the much-longed-for sense of stability it provides. “That’s why I love this show so much. It was my first certain job,” she enthuses. “The rest of the time, you just jump around and see where you go. Nine saw something in me that no-one else did. Before then, I had never hosted. God, this sounds so self-indulgent...”

That same self-deprecating humour and humility have endeared audiences to Monk ever since she first appeared on the 2000 reality series Popstars. Auditioning to become part of a new girl group, the fresh-faced Marilyn Monroe impersonator from Warner Bros. Movie World theme park on the Gold Coast became the break-out star of the Seven Network show and, at 20 years old, she hit the big time with the band it spawned, Bardot.

Popstars and Bardot are now back in the headlines thanks to her former bandmate Belinda Chapple’s recently published memoir, The Girl In The Band. Chapple also serves as an executive producer on Paper Dolls, the upcoming Paramount+ drama series about a fictional early 2000s girl group called Harlow. Through both projects, Chapple shares cautionary tales about the exploitation of young artists during that era of pop history and, in her book, her revelations about Bardot’s long hours, low wages (just $35 per day in cash) and contract terms on maintaining their looks have left many readers shocked.

Although Monk says she hasn’t read The Girl In The Band, she is aware of its content. “I can only talk from my experience,” she says, acknowledging that she isn’t as jaded about her time in Bardot as Chapple is. “Look, we weren’t earning a lot of money, but before that I was earning no money. I was singing in pubs with a band. I was singing at the Sheraton with a piano. For me, I thought – in our industry, unfortunately – you’ve got to get out there and get the experience before you start earning.”

“It’s all I have ever known,” she tells Stellar. “I have been onstage since I was five dancing, eight singing,” says Monk of her chosen career path. Picture: Steven Chee for Stellar

At the peak of their popularity, Bardot’s first single ‘Poison’ went double platinum, the five girls were on magazine covers and hordes of fans would turn up to see them perform, all in an era before Monk’s every move could be captured on a smartphone.

“Back in the day, the media wrote the headlines, so if they were stuck on something, it didn’t matter how many interviews you did,” she says of the narratives created around her. “It used to be about my weight, and I think people are obsessed about weight as it is.

“Back then, if I put on weight, it would be ‘She’s fat’. They would actually put that in the headline. And then they’d go, ‘She’s too thin now’. It was all about my weight. It didn’t matter what I did or said. And now you can answer it. You can go on your socials and explain, ‘This is what happened.’”

There are some aspects of that era that Monk, 43, does look back at with great fondness – namely the fashion. A lot of the looks that were popularised by Monk and the likes of Victoria Beckham and Paris Hilton in the early 2000s are making a comeback and we’ve seen the recent return of corsetry, cut-outs and belly chains.

“You know what, I actually love low-rise, skinny jeans as a look because I have a short body and long legs so it suits me to stretch out my body,” she enthuses. “But I feel like they’re bad for you. They keep saying there are concerns about [their impact on your body]. I do remember being like, ‘Ow, that’s really hit a nerve because they went that low.’ So, maybe I wouldn’t wear them again for health reasons.”

Aside from the odd fashion-related health incident, Monk has no regrets about her chosen career. “It’s all I have ever known,” she tells Stellar. “I have been onstage since I was five dancing, eight singing. Competitions like [reality TV show] Dance Moms… this is just what comes with it.” Every workplace has challenges, she reasons, and even if she has to tell jokes at her own expense, it’s worth doing if she makes others happy.

“I’ve got everything I ever wanted,” she says. “If I didn’t experience all of that, then I wouldn’t be where I am right now. The message I want to say is: keep going through the dark, down times because it does get better. For me, it’s like I’ve earnt it.” Picture: Steven Chee for Stellar

Likewise, she’s philosophical about her Popstars moment. “I do look back at it and, even though we didn’t have a lot of money, the experience was out of this world. It was once in a lifetime,” she says, adding that anything that happened behind the scenes in Bardot paled in comparison to what she encountered in Hollywood during her 20s. “That was harder than being in the band,” she admits. “I was used to being protected in a band with girls where you could share the press and all that, and then to move to LA and start over in acting? And that’s a whole [other] ball game. The things I have seen! But you learn and grow.”

While the public has only recently been made aware through the #MeToo movement about the longtime predatory behaviour and abuses of Hollywood power brokers such as disgraced and jailed movie producer Harvey Weinstein, Monk got a small taste of that toxicity when she moved to Los Angeles in 2005. Although she says she didn’t have any major problems with harassment, the atmosphere was always sexually charged. “It’s almost like it was a town of single people back then – I’m not sure what it’s like now because I haven’t been there for 10 years,” she explains. “You would be doing meetings and you’d be like, ‘Is this a date or a reading?’ And then you’d have someone who has a crush on you, and they won’t put you in a movie because they want to keep you where you are so they can date you.”

Monk speculates this sort of power imbalance was partly to blame for Hollywood’s darker elements. “Celebrities are treated like they’re special – very special – and I don’t think that’s healthy,” she says. “It almost becomes an obsession for some of these people, because they get everything they want, right?”

Insisting that it was the spirit of adventure rather than ambition that took her to LA, Monk says she found the ferocity of competition in Hollywood unrelenting. “Even my dentist wanted a reality show,” she says. “It’s a funny little place and people warned me about it before I went. I was like, ‘I will be fine.’ But before I knew it, I was like, ‘This is not what I’m about.’ That’s why I thought, I want to come back to Australia. I was just on the cusp of getting some good stuff, but I didn’t want it anymore.”

That’s not to say Monk won’t answer when Hollywood comes calling. She recently shot a new comedy alongside US rapper Vanilla Ice called Zombie Plane: Z-Force 1 in which the pair play heightened versions of themselves.

Monk laughs about referring to her co-star by his nom de rap rather than his real name (Robert Van Winkle) and delighting in teaching him Aussie slang. “A lot of what we say goes over their heads,” she says of people in the US. “And we swear a lot more than [they do]. They don’t really use it unless it’s necessary and they’re angry.”

Monk plans to write her own book one day, with the hope it will provide candid advice to aspiring actors and singers about the realities of the industry. “I would love to think it was all worth it for someone younger than me to read it and go, ‘F*ck, she went through all that, so it was fine for me to go through it,’” she says. “I just have to be in the right headspace to sit down and relive it.”

For now, though, she’s relishing the chance to nurture young talent on Love Island Australia. “I’ve got everything I ever wanted,” she says. “If I didn’t experience all of that, then I wouldn’t be where I am right now. The message I want to say is: keep going through the dark, down times because it does get better. For me, it’s like I’ve earnt it.”

Then, realising she might be getting a little too deep, Monk adds with a laugh, “God, I sound like I’m spiritual, which I’m not. But it’s almost like the universe rewards you for going through dark times.”

Season 5 of Love Island Australia premieres at 6pm on Monday, October 30, on 9Now.

Originally published as Sophie Monk: ‘Everyone was obsessed with my weight’