Lisa Wilkinson on her female friendships in new memoir It Wasn’t Meant To Be Like This

TV host Lisa Wilkinson tells how the pain of being bullied forced her to rethink her female friendships.

Morning Wars – the drama starring Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon – claims to pull back the curtains on early morning TV, revealing a world of conflict and competition especially between the female co-hosts.

However, it hasn’t been that way for Lisa Wilkinson in her four-decade career which started in magazines with Dolly and Cleo, before entering the fray of television and morning shows.

Lisa Wilkinson at Cleo magazines farewell party at the The Woollahra Hotel in Sydney. Picture: James Croucher

Wilkinson has formed incredible female friendships stretching back to her Dolly days. She has famously fostered talent such as Mamamia founder Mia Freedman and remained firm friends with journalists such as 60 Minutes presenter Liz Hayes, who set her up with her husband Peter FitzSimons some 30 years ago.

Lisa Wilkinson with Karl Stefanovic, Sylvia Jeffreys and Peter Stefanovic. Picture: Stephen Cooper

As we chat over Zoom, Nine Today Extra host Sylvia Jeffreys calls mid-interview, cutting off Wilkinson’s camera. Wilkinson pauses to message Jeffreys – who is married to Peter Stefanovic, Karl’s younger brother – to let her know she’ll phone back soon, joking that she could multi-task – she is a woman after all.

“You watch, Lisa, I can put the washing on now too – which is what I used to do at 3am as I walked out the door,” she laughs. Wilkinson has consciously worked hard at maintaining those bonds, and not just with Jeffreys, after Wilkinson’s abrupt departure from the Today show, which has been examined at length following an extract from her soon-to-be released memoir It Wasn’t Meant To Be Like This.

Long time friends Liz Hayes and Lisa Wilkinson when she first started on the Today show. Picture: Supplied.

She writes, in the foreword, “And when the prizes for women are so few, what does that do to our psyche? What does that mean for our desire to see other women succeed?

“How does it affect the camaraderie we feel with other women when we are all essentially set up to be in competition for the few tiny slices of the pie that we’re told exist?”

Wilkinson has steadfastedly refused to make it a competition between herself and her colleagues.

“I’ve got incredible friendships both from my magazine and television times – and both in front and behind the camera,” Wilkinson said.

Lisa Wilkinson, in her Cleo editor days, with Mia Freedman. Picture: Supplied

“Morning Wars has to have that dramatic element – you’ve got to have that storyline. There is an element in the media – mostly in the women’s magazines – where it’s really easy pickings to pit women against each other. The amount of damage that does …

“It happens on reality-TV shows but those women know what they are signing up for. They are signing up for a competition where there is only one woman at the end and reality-TV cameras love it when there’s a bitch slap because that’s where the ratings are. I do worry about the effect that has on young women.”

Lisa Wilkinson at the Logies in 2019 with The Project’s Pete Helliar, Carrie Bickmore and Sylvia Jeffreys.

Wilkinson attributes her desire to break that mould to the bullying she suffered through her high school years.

“I know what it is to be diminished and disregarded and feeling very much alone at the hands of other women,” she says.

“I got to leave that environment and decide really consciously that I was going to rewrite the narrative.

“I was going to be the best version of me and I’m not going to let those girls define who I am and what I am capable of.

“I was in a working environment where nobody knew any of that. I felt like I got this second chance to work out who I was and what my talents were.”

Wilkinson, who now hosts The Sunday Project, hopes women will read her book and realise they are stronger linking arms and working together.

“Men are going to get in the way, we know that, but when we support each other, we create opportunities for each other,” she says.

“When you pit yourself against another woman you only make that whole boys’ club stronger and they can say ‘look what happens when you put women together. They make it complicated and emotional’.

Lisa Wilkinson at her good friend Mia Freedman’s book launch with fellow respected journalists Leigh Sales and Julia Baird. Picture: John Feder/The Australian.

“I was fortunate that I’ve been in almost exclusively female environments in magazines long before I got to TV, which has a much more male-dominated culture. Where it is encouraged for women to feel like it is one against the other. That you have to be prettier, skinnier, younger in order to make it.

“All kudos to Channel 9, they put me in that role on the Today show when I was heading towards my late 40s and my age never came up.

“And audiences liked what they saw, they liked having a woman that had some flying miles under her belt. And now we’ve seen that change happen organically in the last 10 years with Leigh Sales, Tracy Grimshaw and Sarah Ferguson.

“Most of the women that audiences trust now are these women that do have experience and knowledge. We’re not just the weather girls anymore.”

She added: “What I want is for women to feel like they can be courageous. That they can try new things and keep growing.

“That it is good to be uncomfortable because when we are uncomfortable, we challenge ourselves and then we don’t die wondering.”

It Wasn’t Meant To Be Like This by Lisa Wilkinson, published by HarperCollins, is out on November 3 and is available for pre-order from Booktopia.