Celeste Barber on claims she ‘looks too good to be relatable’

Accused of being a “sell out” for looking too stylish, the social media megastar has scoffed at the negative commentary, telling Stellar “I look really banging hot on a red carpet... but I also look like a bag of dicks when I want to. I can do it all.”

Celeste Barber is set to explore Australia’s fashion history as host of the new docuseries The Way We Wore. Picture: Simon Upton for Stellar

The famous faces striking their earnest poses don’t always love the deadpan mimicry from Celeste Barber, but the comedian’s 9.6 million Instagram followers certainly do. Her laugh-out-loud posts have made the 41-year-old one of the biggest stars on social media and ramped up an acting career that includes a Logie-nominated series. Now Barber is set to explore Australia’s fashion history as host of the new docuseries The Way We Wore, learning about the industry that has shaped her humour, as well as her life

Exhausted after weeks on the road performing her sell-out Fine, Thanks tour in 2022, Celeste Barber had something of a fashion identity crisis. The actor and comedian – who became an internet sensation for posting laugh-out-loud parodies of clickbait-y fashionista photos and videos – couldn’t even put a pair of socks together. She called her husband, Api Robin, to confess she had “forgotten how clothes work”. So he came up with a pragmatic solution that saved her from spiralling any further: a uniform. Much like Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, Barber soon took to wearing jeans and a black T-shirt every day so she no longer had to devote any time or energy to figuring out what to wear. “Apparently all incredibly smart, brilliant geniuses do that,” she quips, laughing about her newfound approach to dressing.

But don’t let Barber’s cavalier couture fool you – the 41-year-old hasn’t become an Instagram legend with 9.6 million followers without curating a bit of fashion fandom.

“Whenever I get a job, I buy myself a little something fancy,” says Barber. Picture: Simon Upton for Stellar

As she tells Stellar, she grew up spellbound by the sight of her mum sewing sequins onto her elaborate dance costumes, and she spent countless happy hours playing dress-ups with her sister Olivia. While studying drama at the now-defunct Theatre Nepean in Western Sydney, Barber was obsessed with fashion magazines and would scrapbook her favourite articles and photos for easy reference. When her career started to take off, she considered it fitting that some of her success would be reflected in her wardrobe.

“Whenever I get a job, I buy myself a little something fancy,” she says. “I bought myself a pair of Chanel shoes when I got Wellmania. I splurge a little bit each time, and so I have these nice pieces.”

When it premiered in March, the Netflix comedy-drama series didn’t just see Barber become a little more well-heeled. Playing Liv Healy – a food writer whose professional success barely stays atop her personal messes – Barber received her first Logie nomination as an actor. And while the Silver Logie for Most Popular Actress ended up going to Fisk star Kitty Flanagan for a second year running, Barber doesn’t take the achievement for granted.

“Look at the Oscars,” she says with a shrug. “You don’t get nominated for being funny. I remember when Robin Williams won [Actor in a Supporting Role in 1998] for Good Will Hunting and I was like, ‘Yes! A comedy man!’ I think Taika Waititi once said that comedy is twice as hard as drama, because what drama does is tell the stories and what comedy has to do is tell the story and make it funny.”

“Fashion is such a massive industry, a multibillion-dollar industry,” she says. “It just dominates everything we do,” she says. Picture: Simon Upton for Stellar

The decision not to renew Wellmania for a second season came as a surprise to many – including Barber, who revealed the news in an exasperated Instagram video on October 31, saying: “Netflix said it’s something about numbers. Sure. I thought it smashed it, but I don’t understand how it works... This industry is kind of bullsh*t!”

Barber’s ability to wrap biting social commentary in a sparkly laugh riot has won her legions of fans, but it has also laid bare the difficulty in being a public figure. When the bushfire relief campaign she started in hopes of raising $30,000 netted $51.3 million in 2020 she was elated. But once the legal parameters of where the money could be directed were clarified five months later – making it far more limited in scope than she had promised – she felt the full ire of social media.

“I think if you go into something now – naive, thinking everyone is going to love it – you will crash pretty hard,” she reflects. “It doesn’t matter what you do. You could find the cure for cancer and someone will be furious that you didn’t do it sooner or that you didn’t do it the right way.”

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

Barber now avoids discussing that experience in any detail because she doesn’t want to “make it all about me” she says. That said, she concedes, “People are allowed to be pissed off. People aren’t always happy with what you do, no matter how good your intentions are.”

She’s hoping, however, that her latest ventures will trend upwards. She was recently announced as part of the cast – along with Jai Courtney, Deborah Mailman and Jack Thompson – for the upcoming family film Runt. And later this month Barber will host the new three-part ABC docuseries The Way We Wore, which charts the cultural impact and history of Australian fashion through archival video, stunning images and interviews with prominent designers including Collette Dinnigan, Catherine Martin, Alex Perry, Akira Isogawa and Camilla Franks.

In her role, Barber will offer personal insights as well as comedic commentary on the national experience. “Fashion is such a massive industry, a multibillion-dollar industry,” she says. “It just dominates everything we do. People are judged on how they look, particularly women, and what we wear all the time. And now it’s on social media, as well. It’s in our psyche whether we want it to be or not.”

Though the premise of The Way We Wore seems to have emerged straight from Barber’s brain (and wardrobe), she admits it was one of the rare projects she didn’t generate herself. “You’d think it would be non-stop offers coming in, but it’s not the case,” she reveals. “I usually still have to develop most things myself. When you look like this, or when you don’t look like a Hollywood movie star, you’ve still got to create your own stuff.”

When she landed the role of Bree Matthews on Australian medical drama All Saints in 2005, Barber was 23, eager to try her hand at all genres. But with encouragement from friends, she began to explore ways to capitalise on her innate humour and self-deprecation, leading to the viral Instagram posts that she began creating in 2015 under the hashtag #celestechallengeaccepted. “I’m an overnight sensation that’s 25 years in the making,” she says with a laugh.

“You’d think it would be non-stop offers coming in, but it’s not the case,” she reveals. “I usually still have to develop most things myself,” she says. Picture: Simon Upton for Stellar

Barber acknowledges a clear feminist component to her humour, which may explain its relatability. “When you’re doomscrolling at 3am while trying to breastfeed a screaming child and you hate yourself already, looking at those [perfect social media] images I was like, oh, I want to give you something else to have a little look at,” she says. “It was just a different lens. And I just don’t think we’re really given many different lenses to look through as women, or to be looked at as women.”

While plenty hail her as fashion’s antihero (in August, under one of Barber’s wry posts, US comedian and actor Amy Schumer commented, “Why are you so wonderful?”), she’s also come under scrutiny for her own high-end sartorial choices. In January, she was accused of being a “sell out” for looking stylish at the Australian Open; in July, some claimed she was a hypocrite for posting images and video of herself getting ready to walk the Logies red carpet in a silver Alex Perry dress. Although she says her audience is mostly kind and supportive, she admits archly, “Sure, there are some dickheads, but I would be bored if there weren’t a few dickheads.”

Likewise, Barber scoffs at any suggestion that negative commentary about her “looking too good to be relatable” has made her feel pressure to look less glamorous. “I’m 41. I have two children and I’ve been working so hard,” she tells Stellar. “I only gained success in my chosen field five years ago, so I’m really leaning into every aspect of my life and my success. And, again, that’s the thing for women; we’re multifaceted. I look really banging hot on a red carpet when I have been in hair and make-up for a decade, but I also look like a bag of dicks when I want to. I can do it all.”

Body image advocate and current Australian of the Year, Taryn Brumfitt, told Stellar’s Something To Talk About podcast in February that Barber’s size shouldn’t be part of the conversation: “I follow Celeste because I want to laugh. Whether she does that in a size-16 or size-8 body, I don’t care.” Chuffed by Brumfitt’s support, Barber is similarly frustrated that she’s labelled brave for posing in her underwear simply because she doesn’t look like a Victoria’s Secret model. “When [model] Ashley Graham does an interview, we talk about her body,” she says with a sigh. “When Lizzo does an interview, we talk about her body. When I do an interview, we talk about my body. When Taryn does an interview, we talk about her body.

“Of course, the good outweighs the bad, otherwise I wouldn’t be doing this interview and I wouldn’t be working the way I am; it would just be shut down,” she says. Picture: Simon Upton for Stellar

“If we’re going to do that, let’s make it equal. Why don’t we talk to Gigi Hadid about her body, or Bella Hadid about hers? Or Kendall Jenner? But we don’t because we see those bodies as normal – and what’s expected for women.”

Now that Barber’s two sons with Robin – Lou, 12, and Buddy, 9 – are getting older, they have gradually become more aware of what she does. Neither of them has social media yet, but Barber says her eldest recently came to her, mortified, that his mates had found her on TikTok.

“I said to him, ‘OK, how do you feel about that?’ And he said, ‘I just don’t understand why you have to be naked,’” she recalls. “And my response was, ‘First of all, I am not naked.

I am never naked. And second of all, you’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it. Tell them it’s not for you or your friends. It’s just for fun. And if that’s coming up on their algorithm, then they’re probably looking at other women, so it shouldn’t bother them to look at a body like this, as well.’”

Barber doesn’t post as often as she once did, reasoning that the internet has become so “bananas, with so much out there, that I kind of get overwhelmed”. Her success has also spawned a lot of imitators. “I have seen people doing similar stuff and in the comments, people are furious with them, saying, ‘This is Celeste Barber’s thing.’ And I’m like, ‘No, no, it’s OK, we’re good to go,’” she says.

In fact, Barber can imagine people parodying her online someday. Likewise, despite reports about stars such as model Emily Ratajkowski blocking her on social media for poking fun, Barber says most of the people she’s mocked are in on the joke. “Of course, the good outweighs the bad, otherwise I wouldn’t be doing this interview and I wouldn’t be working the way I am; it would just be shut down,” she says. “The cream rises to the top, so it’s received really well. If people don’t like it, that’s OK. I don’t like everyone, either.”

On the flip side, a parody from Barber has become such a badge of honour for many stars and influencers that several have secretly asked her to have a crack at them.

“I get messages constantly,” she reveals. “And I get messages from fancy people sending me pictures of other fancy people saying, ‘You’ve got to do this.’”

So, who are these stars? When asked, Barber remains the soul of discretion and declines to name-drop, though it has been noted that Khloé Kardashian and Kris Jenner have liked some of her posts. “But I have [had] much more excellent ladies and fancy influential women [reach out], who have been in the industry for much longer than that family,” she says of her other A-list fans. “They’re very kind to me, and I’ve become quite good friends with them when I’m away. But I don’t kiss and tell.”

The Way We Wore premieres at 8pm on November 21 on ABC TV and iview.