TV presenter Leigh Sales opens up about near death, heated criticism and her nagging self-doubt
UPON her return from maternity leave, critics wondered if ABC host Leigh Sales still had ‘it’. Truth is, she nearly didn’t make it back at all after a “near fatal” medical emergency.
WHEN she returned from maternity leave late last year, Leigh Sales was met with a few stinging articles that loudly wondered if she still had ‘it’.
The pointed commentary seemed to imply that the respected host of 7.30, the ABC’s flagship current affairs program, might not be up to the job after taking several months off to have her second baby.
But little did those critics know that Sales very nearly didn’t make it back at all, after a difficult birth that was “near fatal”.
“The delivery was complicated … it was life-threatening for both me and him,” Sales, 42, said.
“It required 10 days in hospital. It was a confronting and difficult experience that left me unwell for months.”
While unwilling to go into further detail about the medical emergency, the respected broadcaster stressed both she and James, now one, were fine.
“That’s why going back to work was good — resuming a routine,” Sales recalled.
“Then there were those stories, questioning whether I could still do it … that was strange and probably a little disappointing. But things move fast and it wasn’t long until it was business as usual.”
It’s not the first time Sales — regarded as one of the country’s best interviewers — has bounced back from adversity.
At the start of her career, she was knocked back for a cadetship at her hometown newspaper and later, after landing a job at Channel Nine, told she didn’t have “the look” to be a TV reporter.
“I was crushed,” Sales said. “But then I got a job at the ABC, which was a case of being around when something came up.”
The man who gave her that lifeline at the public broadcaster, John Cameron, was the same one she phoned nearly five years ago before formally accepting the 7.30 gig, asking if he thought she could do it.
It’d been Sales and her colleague Chris Uhlmann who first pitched the idea of co-hosting the program to ABC executives after learning Kerry O’Brien was about to step down, but when they expressed interest, Sales had second thoughts.
The pessimistic voice inside her head warned her she’d be “the woman who killed (the show)”.
“I have a serious case of impostor syndrome sometimes,” Sales said.
“People are surprised to hear me talk about how I doubt myself because I seem so confident. But I’m the worst at putting myself under pressure.”
Even now, years on and at the height of her career, in the moments before she’s beamed live into living rooms across Australia, there’s a lingering doubt about if she’s any good.
“The worst bit of my day is the five minutes before we go to air … my five minutes of hell. It’s just me in the studio with the camera and the cameraman hidden behind it, waiting to start.
“There’s literally nothing else to do but sit there and wait, and all I have to think about is not messing it all up.”
On especially bad nights, the rising voice of questioning insecurity urges Sales to just get up and walk out — that she can’t do it. To run and not look back.
“When I’m having those awfully anxious moments, it’s terrible. It’s the most sickening feeling. It’s like, ‘you’ve been lucky but tonight’s the night it’s all going to unravel.’
“It’s like, I can’t do this. It’s the longest five minutes. If you’re prone to self-doubt like me, it’s not great.”
But then the countdown begins, the red light atop the camera switches on and it’s show time, and suddenly Sales is fine.
“I guess I have the show to think about and it suddenly occupies all of my thoughts. The rest just slips away.”
Sometimes the anxiety isn’t there at all. When it is, she tries to “harness the nervous energy” to help her focus, without letting it “derail the whole thing”.
It can be precarious balancing act, she admitted.
When the show’s over, Sales is out the door within a matter of minutes and on her way home to husband Phil Willis and their boys Daniel, three, and James.
While she loves social media, especially Twitter, she rarely looks at it after the show. She’d probably drive herself mad if she did.
“Twitter goes into overload, particularly if I’ve just done a big interview, like with the prime minister. I have to disconnect from it.”
On heated nights, outside of general discussion and debate, there can be an avalanche of nastiness about everything from her appearance to allegations of political bias.
“I’ve developed a thick skin so the personal stuff is water off a duck’s back.
“But that highly partisan stuff is what I find so draining. I interview Bill Shorten and there’s abuse about what an LNP stooge I am, and the next day I interview Tony Abbott and people scream that I’m a Labor hack. I cop it from both sides. It’s tedious.”
The irony is that Sales finds the idea of being welded to a party bizarre. She’s a natural contrarian, she said, and doesn’t adhere 100 per cent to much of anything.
“I swing in the breeze a bit when it comes to politics.”
Besides, there are more important things to occupy her time — like family, reading books and recording a popular podcast with her friend and media colleague Annabel Crabb.
When her kids are a bit older, Sales would like to use what little spare time she might have to write a novel. It’s something she’s wanted to do since she was a child, enchanted by the work of Enid Blyton.
“Like all kids, I went through phases though — I remember watching The Love Boat and thinking I’d like to be a cruise director,” she laughed.
“Later, A Country Practice made me want to be a vet. But I always came back to storytelling and I figured journalism was pretty close to that.”
Over her career, Sales has interviewed world leaders, spent time with Hollywood megastars and probed crucial current issues with global power players.
But it was a recent sit-down with the late arts identity Betty Churcher that she regards as a true highlight.
“When I first moved to Sydney many years ago, she was the director of the National Gallery and I was the arts reporter. She was a larger-than-life character with so much warmth and charisma.
“I contacted her earlier this year and she only had a few weeks to live. She knew it’d be the last public thing she did. I went there and she spoke so frankly about life and death.
“When I left, she grabbed my hand and said: ‘Leigh, it’s time for you to muster your courage.’”
And so, during those moments when she’s second-guessing herself, Sales sometimes thinks of Churcher.
“She’s an example of how you can live life. You can either hate the success of others, be negative about everything, or you can be full of life and energy.
“I have a photo of her on my phone that I often look at. I aspire to be like Betty — warm, generous and just engaged with life to the point where it’s infectious.”
7.30 airs Monday to Thursday at 7.30pm on ABC
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