This is me: Lisa Curry reveals more than she ever has
After spending almost four decades in the public eye, Lisa Curry is ready to retreat from the spotlight, but not before she bares all for a good cause in her latest reality-TV role.
U on Sunday
Don't miss out on the headlines from U on Sunday. Followed categories will be added to My News.
SHE IS usually unflappable. She is usually strong ... mentally and physically. But at this very moment, she is acutely aware her legs are shaking. This could all end in disaster. Just like in rehearsals earlier today.
With the lights low, and lined up with seven other female celebrities, the 57-year-old’s hands sweat as she grips a pair of oversized pink ostrich feather fans. On the other side of the rose-red curtain to them the audience roars in anticipation. In just a few minutes, if all goes to plan, the women will have completed the strip routine they have been rehearsing for days and face the audience … proud, uninhibited, exposed.
Australians get behind striptease in the name of men’s health awareness
Inside Sydney’s art deco Enmore Theatre the stage lights ramp up, the curtains jolt apart and the women move on the beat of what’s fast becoming an anthem of sorts …
When the sharpest words wanna cut me down. I’m gonna send a flood, gonna drown them out. I am brave, I am bruised, I am who I’m meant to be …
This is Lisa Curry.
How she comes to be on this stage, to be revealing herself on Seven’s The All New Monty: Ladies’ Night one-off TV special, educating on the importance of self-checking and screening for breast cancer, is a deep-seated passion for helping others, especially women her age.
How she comes to pose for today’s cover of U on Sunday, proudly stripped back to reveal her inner strength and her outer battle scars, is her statement that she has found her happy space; that she doesn’t need to compare herself to anyone else; and that she is comfortable with her body.
“We’re putting our bodies on the line for a good cause – which we’re happy to do – but it’s still confronting, especially when you’re standing next to Miss World,” says Curry, making reference to fellow Ladies’ Night performer, model Rachael Finch. “Righto! Miss World! But with that you can’t compare yourself. I’ll never look like her. She will never swim like me. You can’t compare yourself to anyone.
“And I want that to be a message. Never compare yourself to anybody because we’re all on our own journey. We have to make the best of it.”
As she sits down with U on Sunday backstage at the Enmore before her performance, Curry is animated and warm, but there are distractions – a family member is in hospital; her son Jett is across town performing live on another TV show; and Curry’s dress “malfunctioned” during rehearsals earlier that day. Then comes the distraction of the other celebrity performers, lit with nervous excitement, they cackle and high-five each other as they dash in and out of nearby dressing rooms in their plump white dressing gowns.
Former Olympic swimmer and world champion outrigger canoeist Curry is doing her best to focus and, for now, those nerves that will later make her legs shake, are at bay.
“I’m doing this for a couple of reasons,” she says, hands resting in her lap. “There are lots of people who are struggling with illness and disease and cancer; and there are a lot of charities out there doing all their great work, but they can’t quite cut through because there is so much everywhere, everyone trying to raise money and awareness. This show gives us a voice for those who don’t or can’t have a voice.
“The other reason was it’s kinda fun. My son did it for the first (Monty) show last year, so I just loved watching his whole experience – and I know a lot of people got themselves checked (for prostate cancer) because of that show.”
The success of that show didn’t surprise Curry – “Yeah, well, who wouldn’t want to look at Jett Kenny’s bottom,” she deadpans.
Curry’s not worried about being topless in front of the live audience or the hundreds of thousands of people who will watch the show on TV (“that’s the easy part,” she says, “we’ve all got bits!”), she’s more concerned about nailing the dance routine. Her dancing career began and ended when she was 8.
“I was in a dance concert and I remember getting off stage and my mum said, ‘All that, for that?’. The costumes and the makeup, and I was on stage for like a minute or so,” she grins, “Nothing since then. But I’m very good after a couple of wines. I think I am anyway.”
Jett, who is performing that same night on Dancing With The Stars, and Curry’s middle child, daughter Morgan who has danced at the Moulin Rouge in Paris, have their own opinions.
“Morgan has helped a lot. She says, ‘OK, Mum, let’s stop and practise walking first’. What? Really? Morgan talks a lot about face, using the face. She is amazing on stage, and that advice has been really helpful,” says Curry. “Jett said to me, ‘Mum, that’s not dancing, that’s just moving around for a couple of minutes’.”
Despite that, Ladies’ Night choreographer Todd McKenney says he has been impressed with Curry’s dedication during training and the way she handled the day’s earlier setback.
“I could see Lisa quietly panicking after that disastrous final rehearsal,” he says. “But being the true champion she is, she pulled herself together. All those years of experience of performing under pressure, albeit in the water, really paid off.”
McKenney says Curry “hates getting things wrong” and her determination to nail the choreography was impressive.
“Her strongest asset was her ability to dissect every aspect of the routine and rehearse like she was at the Olympics. She took the whole job very seriously but still had fun with it,” he says. “I love it when dancers ask a million questions because it tells me they want to get it right. Lisa asked two million questions and I loved that.”
That need to know is a direct result of several major life issues that occurred after Curry gave up professional competition. In 2008 she underwent heart surgery to have a defibrillator implanted after being diagnosed with an irregular heartbeat. A year later she separated from and divorced first husband, ironman Grant Kenny to whom she has three children, Jett, Morgan, and eldest child Jaimi Lee. Not long after she managed to get some insight into the hormonal health issues she had suffered for many years and began treatment. “I had terrible hormonal issues for a very long time. I didn’t know what they were, I just thought I was being a miserable cow,” she says.
All those situations required her to stop and question her life, and to continue to ask questions.
“They don’t know exactly why it was,” she says about the heart health scare, “but an athlete’s heart changes. It gets bigger. It’s worked a lot.
“And I trained hard every day. Every day since I was probably 12, up until I had my defibrillator. So I had a good 35 years of pushing myself hard. Pushing yourself over and above what the average body is capable of can be dangerous. But I didn’t know any different. That’s what I loved to do. It was my life. I trained, I raced, I loved to win, I just loved the adrenaline of it all.”
She is more relaxed, yet still vigilant, about her fitness routine these days.
“I’m not a regular swimmer, I mainly walk and go to the gym,” she says. “A bit of everything to keep it fun and myself in a reasonable shape.
“I don’t need to push myself anymore. I don’t need to be the athlete that I was.
“My physique has changed and even though I kinda don’t like it – because I liked looking like an athlete – I accept it. I’m not an athlete anymore, so I accept the way that I look now, because I’m happy.”
That happiness is strongly derived from her current work, running the website Happy Healthy You, which offers education, support and resources for women’s health.
“We have nearly 200,000 people on our Facebook pages. And that’s just the start,” she says. “We hope to have 2 million people one day. I really love my job and what I do and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I can’t wait to wake up in the mornings.”
A couple of months after filming Ladies’ Night, Curry invites U on Sunday to her physical “happy space” – the 24-hectare property she and new husband Mark Tabone own in the Sunshine Coast hinterland. They run a few cows and chickens. And the rolling green slopes that stretch down and away from the verandas of their renovated cottage are proudly maintained by Curry, who says she enjoys being atop the ride-on mower. A weathered hardwood fence trails from the far-from-Olympic-size pool, up and around to the entry road and rustic outbuildings and rose patch – a picturesque spot where the pair held their wedding last year. It’s also where the family, including Grant Kenny, Morgan and husband Ryan Gruell and their son Flynn (Curry’s only grandchild), now one-and-a-half, gathered for Christmas.
Tabone, an Elvis impersonator and a collector of 1960s-ish memorabilia and vehicles, talks low and politely as he shows us around the buildings, pointing out the stack of colonial doors and windows he’s salvaged, and the outdoor bar he’s building. When he smiles – which he does often when talking about his wife – his face widens in a rich, country farmer way.
“I was nervous but excited,” he says about watching Curry at Ladies’ Night in Sydney. “But actually I got emotional. I had a couple of my family members at the time who were suffering from cancers, so it kind of really hits home to what it’s all about.
“And I think there is never enough awareness. We get a little bit complacent about life, until it’s hit you, personally. If you have the chance to send a positive message and you’re in the limelight like Lisa is, it’s a fantastic thing that they can do.”
Curry has no illusions about what “celebrity” status entails and is only just now, after Ladies’ Night airs, looking to step back a little. The show will mark Curry’s third excursion into reality TV. In 2011 she went on the first season of Celebrity Apprentice Australia in support of the Heart Foundation, appearing alongside Pauline Hanson and Julia Morris. In 2017, to support struggling farmers, she competed in I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here Australia where she lasted 41 days.
One of her co-celebs in the jungle was singer Casey Donovan who went on to win the series and, coincidentally, also shares the stage with Curry for Ladies’ Night.
Donovan got to see Lisa in her most unguarded moments. “She’s a very proud lady; and that’s something that’s really nice to see,” she tells U on Sunday. “Lisa just goes from strength to strength.”
McKenney says he also got a glimpse of the woman behind the public persona.
“I definitely got to see the real Lisa,” he says. “Jett was performing on Dancing while we were shooting, and Lisa was as focused on his achievements on that show as she was on her own show. Her ‘mother’s love and pride’ was very endearing to watch.”
It is a sentiment earlier established by I’m A Celebrity contestant, model Tegan Martin, when she nicknamed Curry “Mama Bear”.
Over the years, Curry has faced her fair share of “haters”, including a very public stoush with I’m A Celebrity contestant, US actor Tom Arnold, who says she took the show “very seriously” and had “no sense of humour whatsoever”.
“I nearly punched out Tom,” Curry says. “He was hard to deal with. I actually said to the producers if he doesn’t go home I’m leaving, I don’t need this shit in my life.”
Her current combatants are a group of over-60s, trolling her on social media who “can’t stand” her. They hate on everything she does, even complaining that she shouldn’t be showing the “ugly” scar above her left breast where she had the heart operation.
“But it’s funny, you know. For every one person that says something negative there’s a hundred that will support you,” Curry says, keeping an evenness to her voice. “But you still get hurt by it and tend to focus on that. So now I don’t even read it. I don’t.
“I just think these poor old bitter souls that have nothing better to do. Put your phone down, go out, do something. Go do something useful. Go play with your grandkids.”
It is family, particularly becoming a grandma, that is driving Curry’s current focus.
“Sometimes you think what your swimming career was all about,” she muses. “For 23 years of my life I went up and down that black line, but, you know, that moment in time for me as a swimmer has given me so many opportunities.
“I’ve been in the public eye since I’ve been 20, so that’s 36 or so years. It’s a long time to stay in the public eye but I’ve been given amazing opportunities to be a voice for people. Now I get the chance to retreat, because we moved house. We were very high profile where we lived on the Coast before because we were right on a main road. My pink Kombi sat out front, so people knew when we were home.
“I actually said to Mark last week, I’m tired of travelling, I’m tired of living out of a suitcase. It’s just starting to get to me a little bit, because I am really a homebody. I love nothing more than being at our place feeding our cows and our chooks and crocheting in winter.”
And being a grandmother ...
“Oh, Flynn’s beautiful. I’m loving it,” she says, bringing out her phone to show one of the many videos she’s taken of her grandson when he’s visited “the farm”.
It puts everything back in perspective and the pride that is swimming in Curry’s ocean blue eyes enforces her values in life, and the advice she gives others.
“At the end of the day life is short, why wake up and hate your life?” she says, looking up from the screen. “Change something. Everyone has a choice.”
The All New Monty: Ladies’ Night, coming later this month on Channel 7
Curry’s website: happyhealthyyou.com.au
Vote for Brisbane’s best florist
You told us your picks for Brisbane’s best florists. Now it’s time to choose the top 10 in our poll. VOTE NOW
‘I’d give up all my Christmases to attend my own wake’
When people gather to send off the deceased, they come together out of love, affection or respect. There’s no other agenda but to acknowledge the impact that person had on one’s life.