Sylvia Jeffreys on ‘wild’ rumours about Lisa Wilkinson
TV host Sylvia Jeffreys has revealed the personal toll of being stood down from Today in the aftermath of her brother-in-law Karl Stefanovic’s wedding.
Stellar
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The morning TV host talks finance, fame and family as she marks two decades in the newsroom.
Stellar: You’re marking 20 years in the industry this year and you’re not even 40. Just how young were you when you started?
Sylvia Jeffreys: Child labour?! [laughs] I was in my first year of uni, I was 19-years-old and I got a job in the [Nine Brisbane] newsroom rolling autocue and running scripts into the newsreaders. I thought I wanted to do feature writing for magazines and newspapers, but the day I landed in that newsroom, I knew that was me done. I had the bug and I never looked back.
Did you ever foresee that you would one day be the person on the other side of the camera, with someone rolling the autocue for you?
I always aspired to be on camera as a journalist but I didn’t think it would come so soon. I certainly never thought I would have a gig hosting Today Extra or doing the news on Today or filing for 60 Minutes. That was all stuff for other people who were far more talented than me. When you’re 19-years-old, you can’t see it. Back in those days, there weren’t many senior women in television. They say seeing is believing. And there wasn’t a lot of that to look at. I knew I wanted to do it and I was going to work damn hard to get there and have a go and throw my hat in the ring for everything I could. But my expectations were certainly quite low at that point.
Listen to a new episode of Something To Talk About featuring Sylvia Jeffreys below:
Is there some sort of celebration for 20 years in the job? There will be something on Today Extra, won’t there?
You get to keep your job, Sylvia, congratulations [laughs]. I’ll take it, I’ll take a new contract.
You’re hosting a new finance podcast called The Payoff which launched in March. Who is it aimed at?
Younger Australians, Gen Z and Millennials. A couple of things triggered this for me. I reckon just about every week on Today Extra, we were talking about this generational wealth gap and how the system is structurally leaving the next generations behind. You just have to look at the cost of property compared to the average salary these days to see how hard it is to gain that traditional milestone of home ownership now for younger families. The birthrate is declining. The system isn’t moving with the times, and I think there are a lot of concerns about what that means in the long-term for our children. On top of that, I’ve reached a point in my life, almost on the edge of 40, where I’m talking a lot more about money with my girlfriends – God, I wish I did it more when I was 21 and 22 and started putting away $100 a week into an investment, rather than just living within my means.
Everyone has a money story. What’s yours and how has that shaped your relationship with finance?
I think our relationship with money starts very early in life. We didn’t have a lot of luxury, but we had a very rich childhood. [Jeffreys and her two siblings were raised by their social worker mother Janine, after their parents separated when she was three.] In terms of money, it was making ends meet. Meeting the bills, keeping the roof over our head, keeping food on the table, having enough to ensure that we could pursue the opportunities we wanted to pursue and Mum never let us go without on that front. Mum never spent beyond her means… As a social worker, she role-modelled that to us every day. She’s worked with the most disadvantaged people in society. She’s worked with child services, in hospitals, in rehab, across so many different areas as a social worker. And she’s a big believer in lifting people up, in knowing where your own privilege is and helping people who are not as fortunate.
Working in this industry, you have seen and experienced wealth at all levels, including extreme wealth. Does that trigger anything within you, given your childhood and those social justice values?
It’s something I think about a lot. I’ve seen extreme wealth, and my takeaway from it is more money, more problems. I genuinely feel that the secret to life is having enough and knowing what is enough for you, and being happy and content in that because things look really great on the other side, but I’m not entirely convinced that the grass is necessarily greener.
You and your husband Peter Stefanovic, who is the host of Sky News Australia show First Edition, are parents to two boys, Oscar, 5 and Henry, 4. Are you both having conversations about money with your boys?
We’ve already set them up with their own investment accounts. They don’t know about it yet, but every time they get cash from a relative, we put it in there and [we] put a very small amount in there every month. The idea isn’t necessarily to grow wealth for them, but to be able to show them – when they’re old enough to understand – that the power of compound interest is their friend. I don’t want them to be obsessed by money, I don’t want them to be driven by that as the one big foundation of their life, but I want them to understand how it works. It’s understanding that we’re going to work to pay for the house we live in and the meals we’re eating for dinner. This is where the mum guilt comes in when you’re skipping out every morning and going to work – you want them to know it’s for some greater purpose as well.
Listen to a new episode of Something To Talk About featuring Sylvia Jeffreys below:
How is that eternal juggle going for you as a family of four?
It’s messy and chaotic and it’s full on, but it’s beautiful and I have a great partner, a great teammate in Pete. As far as TV gigs go, we’re both very fortunate – we’re aligned in the mornings at the moment, which makes the first half of the day kind of chaotic but it means that we’re both home for the afternoon and the evening and bedtime. We’ve had the first five years of Oscar’s life in that rhythm, which means we’ve had a lot of synergy, a lot of togetherness. It means that we can tag team all afternoon. Pete cooks dinner, I never have to think about dinner. So if anyone wants to know how I survive as a working mum, that’s how: my husband does dinner every night.
Your brother-in-law, Karl Stefanovic, was on the Stellar podcast Something To Talk About earlier this year, and is also marking 20 years on the Today show this year.
Twenty years of 3am alarms. No wonder he’s crazy [laughs].
He spoke very emotionally about when he was stood down from Today in 2018 after he married his wife, Jasmine. You were the newsreader on Today at the time, and you were moved on from that role shortly after his departure. Your husband Pete left Nine as well. Karl said in our interview, “I genuinely felt it was my fault. All I was doing was getting married. I was in love, and I just didn’t feel like we did anything wrong.” You told Stellar in 2019 that you felt like you might have been collateral damage. How do you look back on that time now?
It wasn’t easy. It’s really sweet of Karl to acknowledge how hard that was for everyone. He’s a big softie and he feels it. We’ve had our own private conversations about that. And I know how he feels because it was hard for everyone – we all had jobs that we loved then. But this is the gig we exist in. It’s public and sometimes that means there are some really weird forces at play when it comes to decisions around what we do, where we are, who we work with. It was really challenging, but I always look for the silver linings – this is how I survive things – and the silver lining was that I had amazing support from Pete and we were an amazing team through that. We really supported each other through that… But it’s a very weird thing to be under the microscope at a time like that in your life and very hard to describe the intensity of that. I was also trying to have a baby back then and it wasn’t working. So that was kind of compounding those emotions as well. There was a lot going on for us. But I ended up having an awesome year at A Current Affair. I also happened to fall pregnant in that year and had my beautiful Oscar. It’s one of those moments in life that you look back at and think, OK, that was a big test, but we passed it pretty well.
Women supporting women in the industry is an issue that you feel strongly about, especially as the narrative is still, in all professions, women being pitted against one another. Is that perception getting better?
I’d love all women to support women, but I think we’re being too optimistic to expect it, right? Is that a realistic thing? Because you can’t just say all women will support all women. But I’ve been the beneficiary of women who’ve supported [me] and I’ve been so fortunate to have that experience. Most of them are among my closest friends as well, right across the media landscape. Honestly, they’re a great tool for survival because we’re all able to confide in one another – they understand some of the unique experiences that we go through.
Listen to a new episode of Something To Talk About featuring Sylvia Jeffreys below:
When you were working with Lisa Wilkinson (co-hosting Today until October 2017), you both had to deal with constant headlines about “catfights”.
I like to imagine the meeting rooms when [people are] coming up with these headlines. Like they have two photos of me and Lisa and they’re seven gin and tonics deep, seeing who can come up with the most creative headline about what’s going on between the two of us. I don’t know how it works. It’s wild to me, but if anyone understands why it happens, then give us a holler. Because we would love to know.
Listen to The Pay Off with Sylvia Jeffreys on Spotify, Apple, Nine Now or wherever you get your podcasts.
Read the full interview with Sylvia Jeffreys in today’s Stellar via The Sunday Telegraph (NSW), Sunday Herald Sun (VIC), The Sunday Mail (QLD) and Sunday Mail (SA). And listen to Candice on the Stellar podcast, Something To Talk About, wherever you get your podcasts.
For more from Stellar and the podcast, Something To Talk About, click here.
Originally published as Sylvia Jeffreys on ‘wild’ rumours about Lisa Wilkinson
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