Exclusive: Mel Doyle breaks her silence on leaving Seven Network
EXCLUSIVE: In her first interview since departing the Seven Network, Melissa Doyle explains why she’s not one to sit still for long and that she will never stop looking for ways to tell stories.
Stellar
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It’s an irony not lost on Melissa Doyle that the story she was brought back to prime time to report on would, weeks later, lead to her leaving the Seven Network.
As the nation went into lockdown, it was her assured voice and familiar face that the Seven Network bosses sought to deliver the fast-breaking afternoon and evening news on The Latest as the pandemic swept the nation, stealing lives and livelihoods.
But despite the favourable feedback from fans – “Wow Mel, you just embody class, professionalism and trust,” wrote one on social media – not even a quarter of a century of hard work and loyalty could save one of television’s most famous faces.
“I wouldn’t say it came as a total shock, I just felt really sad,” Doyle reveals to Stellar in her first interview since her 25-year career at the network came to an end last month.
Having worked on multiple shows and special projects, including 15 years hosting the top-rating Sunrise, Doyle admits she felt vulnerable when her four years at the helm of Sunday Night ended last November as the flagship current affairs show was canned.
“There are so many who are worse off,” she tells Stellar.
“I feel really lucky that we are the age we are and that our kids are the age they are. I also have the comfort of knowing that I could probably do a bunch of different things to earn an income.”
And while she laughingly admits to a brief foray with day drinking – “I let myself have one day when I wallowed on the couch and had a gin and tonic a little earlier than I should have” – her overriding feeling is one of gratitude.
Indeed, as she sits in a local cafe near her Sydney home looking as camera-ready as usual in a Dion Lee skirt and fine gold jewellery, any uncertainty about her professional future is outweighed by her appreciation for the career she’s enjoyed thus far.
“I’ve just had the most extraordinary time,” she enthuses in the calm voice that has for so long been a fixture on the Australian television landscape.
“I’ve had more opportunities than I could’ve imagined. I’ve covered more stories, been to more places and met more people than the 16-year-old girl who wanted to be a journalist could’ve dreamt of. Nothing can take that away. I’m really grateful and I loved it.”
Yet for all her positivity, the timing of her exit couldn’t be more bittersweet. This year marks her 50th birthday, her 25th year at the network and her 25th wedding anniversary with husband John Dunlop.
Her children, Nick, 19, and Talia, 16, are swiftly moving from adolescence to adulthood and, by rights, she should be downing champagne, jetting off on exotic holidays and congratulating herself on surviving in an industry that creates as many headlines as it reports.
Instead, like so many who’ve lost their jobs or had their hours reduced, she joins the sobering ranks of the unemployed and underemployed – many of them fellow high-profile television identities such as Natarsha Belling, Kerri-Anne Kennerley, Emma Alberici and Sally Obermeder, who also lost their jobs in recent months as media companies have been forced to cut costs.
Reports speculate she’ll reappear at either the Nine or Ten networks, but in the meantime, she still has her hosting role on Smoothfm and she’s currently working on a seven-part audio documentary on women and ageing for Audible.
She’ll continue to use her profile to do the multiple charity projects that earned her an AM (Member of the Order of Australia) honour – “it’d be a waste of a superpower if I didn’t” – but mostly she wants to keep telling stories.
“I’m excited to think about what will be next and I’m excited to create some things,” she says. “I’ve got to remind myself that although I was with Seven for that length of time, I changed and moved around a number of times. I went from Today Tonight to Sunrise to Sunday Night and I learnt new skills and did different things along the way.”
While her unique selling point was always her relatability – or what some in the industry pejoratively refer to as her “niceness” – it was, in fact, Doyle’s versatility that saw her endure.
Ask her to nominate her career highlights and it reads like a chronicle of modern history: standing outside the Vatican as the new Pope was announced; the inauguration of President Obama; Harry and Meghan’s wedding; waiting on top of the mine at Beaconsfield as the trapped miners came out; the Queensland floods; the bushfires; the Lindt Cafe siege.
But it’s also the human tales, the moments when the broken and suffering entrusted her with their stories, that she cherishes and says had a “huge impact on who I am as a human”.
There’s Mia Wilkinson who at four years old had her arms amputated below her elbows and her legs amputated below her knees after contracting the flu, and then sepsis.
“Oh my God, whatever she needs I’ll be there,” says Doyle. Then there’s Brenda Lin, the only surviving member of the Lin-family massacre, who was sexually assaulted by the uncle who killed her family.
“She’s extraordinary,” Doyle says quietly. “I couldn’t sit down and ask someone to talk about the biggest trauma they’ve ever encountered and not connect on a human level. I promised her I would look after her. When I tell someone’s story, I feel like I’m holding their heart and soul in my hand.”
If those stories showcased her empathy, they have also left her with perspective as she navigates a new life.
For the first time in three decades she does not have access to a hair and make-up department – though our interview reveals she does a pretty good job herself – and she’s chosen to laugh instead of cry when, each morning, she gets into her car and her phone tells her it’s 24 minutes to the Seven studio.
“I’ve driven that road forever,” she says. “How do I tell it not to go there anymore?”
The fact is, Doyle has never really had a break. Her daughter was born while she was hosting Sunrise and for two decades she’s raised two children and cared for her dad through illness on top of what is an unpredictable job. “Yes, I’m exhausted,” she says. “I just feel like I need to sit for a minute and regroup, get some rest and be kind to myself.”
But she does love being busy and admits she’s not good at single-tasking. “I think the world is changing and gone are the days where you would have just one job for 25 years. I like the idea of having a few different projects on the go, because each one will satisfy me in a different way.”
One job she’s nearly completed without really realising is parenting. Her son Nick is set to fly to the US to start aerospace engineering at Seattle University and Talia, who accompanies her mum to circuit classes at the gym, will soon begin her final year of schooling.
“I feel so excited for Nick because it’s his time to shine and fly,” she says enthusiastically. “You spend 19 years getting them to be independent and adventurous and brave, but I forgot to get myself ready. I’ve suddenly gone, ‘What do you mean you don’t need me anymore?’”
Doyle exhibited the same wanderlust as a teen, so much so she recently rang her own parents to say sorry for leaving home without a second thought to go to university in Bathurst and then to Canberra where she worked for WIN and Prime.
Her dad, with whom she’d lived in Sydney after her parents’ divorce, pointed out that leaving home is what you raise your children to do. With Talia also keen to head overseas, Doyle notes that she and John could rapidly become empty-nesters.
It’s one of the reasons why she’d have loved to take the family overseas to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary in November. The pair met after Dunlop asked her to take part in a celebrity swimming race in Canberra and when she declined, he suggested she make it up to him by going out with him.
So she did. She doesn’t overanalyse the success of their marriage, except to point out that they’ve both had periods of travelling and doing the heavy lifting at home.
“We are not that couple that sits there and breaks down the minutiae. We both had the same goal, which was to have a comfortable, happy life. All our friends we’ve had in our life forever. They aren’t in telly and our happy place is a Sunday-arvo barbecue with people we love.”
In fact, Doyle’s long-term motto is one she pinched from her husband: “Control the controllable.”
As she begins her sixth decade after turning 50 in February, she’s pragmatic about ageing and is grateful for her health. “My body still works and I think a lived-in face is beautiful. Sometimes I’ll catch sight of myself in the mirror and think I’m wrinkly, but I guess it shows I’ve been smiling for 50 years.”
With that, she prepares to leave, not for the afternoon news bulletin but to her home where, she laughs, the magnolia branches she pruned and popped in vases the day before have left it looking like a florist’s.
“I’m just going to keep going,” she says. “I’m lucky I can sit it out a bit, but it’s good to look forward. That’s a large part of mental health, otherwise you go down a rabbit hole and I don’t want to do that.” She pauses. “The world will come back in time.”