Georgie Gardner: ‘Good chemistry doesn’t mean being best friends’
MANY believe the success of Today hangs on the relationship between Georgie Gardner and Karl Stefanovic. Now, in her first interview since replacing Lisa Wilkinson, Gardner opens up about family, fame — and her new co-host.
Stellar
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ONE fateful day 16 years ago, Tim Baker opened his door. He was barefoot with a pup at his feet; the smell of barbecuing lamb wafted over his shoulder. Little did he know in that simple act, he’d won the heart of the woman standing before him. “I loved that he had no shoes on and a dog,” Georgie Gardner remembers. “I found it grounding. I found it uncomplicated. One of the things that appealed to me straight up was that he would be a beautiful father. There was just that empathy and care and kindness.”
They’d met at a party, where Gardner liked his shyness (“I am really attracted to shy men,” she says). Baker wasn’t too shy to organise that dinner party as an excuse to see her again; five months later, they were engaged. “I am lucky,” she says. “We are so lucky to have found each other.”
British feminist Caitlin Moran advises young women that if they want children and a career, their life will only be as good as the partner they choose. If that is true, then Gardner chose well. Baker’s support helped her take her first job as Today’s newsreader when second child Angus was only six months old. “When the kids were babies, there was absolutely nothing that he couldn’t or wouldn’t do,” she says. He is now stepping up again as she takes on the “best gig on TV”, returning to the Today show as co-host.
It wasn’t a decision the family made lightly. Pre-dawn alarms are brutal. Sleep deprivation turns the cheeriest people into grumps. Any shreds of anonymity will be gone. Gardner knows this; she’s worked on Today before. But she’s never been in the hot seat — the one followed by paparazzi, the one scrutinised for every ratings slide, and trifles like a twice-worn dress or an interview faux pas.
The cons were many, but the pros were compelling. “There is no other gig like it,” she says. “My feeling is you only get asked once in your career and, at age 47, the time was right. I had life experience behind me, hopefully something to offer, and great encouragement from management at Nine. To me, it was time.”
Georgie Gardner has a Look. She raises an eyebrow, drops her head slightly, opens her eyes a few extra millimetres, and “in that motion,” says a Nine insider, “sends a message that could not be conveyed with a thousand words”. There are three versions: the cheeky one, the inquiring one and the one that says, “Hey, I think you just overstepped the mark.” Baker is quite familiar with it. “The family,” he tells Stellar, “all knows the Look.”
His wife laughs at the description. “I am told I have a Look too, but I can’t see it,” Gardner says. “I don’t even know I am doing it. I think it’s safe to say you know where you stand with me, and I am pretty happy with that.”
She has always been popular with Today viewers, who consistently rated her as a favourite even after she left. She’s also popular around the halls at Nine. “She has a big heart and a big brain,” says Ben Fordham, who has worked with her on the show. “She has strong opinions on what makes the show, and what makes news, and I think that’s why people like her.”
But many believe the success of Today will hang on one thing: her chemistry with co-host Karl Stefanovic. The latter has helmed the show for 13 years, 10 of them with Lisa Wilkinson, whose shock departure last year opened the way for Gardner. Many in the media speculate Stefanovic is likely to find himself on the receiving end of Gardner’s Look.
“Good chemistry doesn’t necessarily equate to being best friends,” Gardner says. “Good chemistry, to me, is interaction and respect and knowing when to let one shine [or] pull back. Drawing out people’s strength, having their back. Making each other laugh, finding the humour. Relationships by their very nature are often complex, and when it’s in those hosting chairs on national TV, you’re exposed. But that’s interesting.”
Gardner wants to put her own stamp on the show too, by focusing on issues close to her heart. One is the struggle of the so-called sandwich generation, women looking after kids, caring for elderly parents, working and doing the housework. “They are being penalised often with career trajectory, because they’re not there for the promotion or the next step,” Gardner says. “We have to be far more understanding of that.”
Gardner’s arrival will change the show, says Nine’s news and current affairs director Darren Wick — “What worked for Lisa is not going to work for Georgie” — but the changes will be gradual. “There’s no big bang theory of ‘Wow, here’s a totally different show.’ We will probably play more with part of the show to build her profile — a few stories and segments that are more reflective of Georgie’s personality and interests.”
Gardner admits she has been “acutely aware” of scrutiny around her return, but “I am not expecting to shoot the lights out straight away. I am trying to find my groove.”
Baker also recalls the moment he knew Gardner was the one. It was on their first “real” date — a “pretty challenging” bushwalk in a national park. “I didn’t know at the time she was scheduled to have ankle surgery a week later, yet she pushed on without complaint,” he says. “It was Georgie’s determination, strength of character and sense of humour that were defining for me.”
As a kid, Gardner dreamed of being an actor. She was, in her words, “pretty plain and chubby”. The stage was her happy place. After school she spent two years as a nanny in Milan and, upon her return, went to the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts to “tell them I had arrived. Of course, they weren’t remotely interested.”
She was sent away to get more life experience, and on her way out took a flyer for the academy’s broadcast media course. Journalism, she soon learnt, could marry her love of performance and instinctive curiosity — and an illustrious career that kicked off in radio and has spanned all three commercial television networks began.
Gardner landed at Nine in 2002, and in 2006 began reading the news on Today. But she now had two young children. Bronte was two and Angus six months when Gardner returned to early starts after maternity leave. At the time, Baker worked long days as a funds manager.
“They were really tricky years,” she says. “They were still waking in the night. Then I would get off air and go home to them, and by five o’clock I needed toothpicks [to hold her eyes open]. I would be absolutely spent, but that didn’t make any difference to them, they still needed my time and attention.”
When they woke overnight, Tim would often tend to them so Gardner could sleep. But sometimes there’s no avoiding night duty. “One night they both had gastro, and just when we’d changed both sets of sheets, put them in the wash and got everyone settled, I looked at my clock and it said quarter past three,” she says. “You get to work having no sleep, and you’re on. Hopefully the viewers had no idea.”
In 2014, Gardner stepped down from Today. Some described her decision as career suicide. But in her eyes, “No TV production is more important than the home front.”
She never regretted it. She happily read weekend news and filled in on Today Extra, enjoying the clarity and patience that came with not being chronically tired. Even when she learnt of Wilkinson’s shock departure in October last year, Gardner didn’t think about the implications. “I never sought that job out, so it didn’t occur to me,” she says.
It did to management — almost immediately. “I don’t think it was too complicated,” says Wick. “Georgie was still immensely popular with the focus groups, even though she hadn’t been there for three years. It was a case of whether she was willing to come back.”
Gardner says reports she initially turned Nine down aren’t true, but admits she did spend a long time thinking about it. “I wanted to be absolutely sure I was ready, and that I was right for the network, and right for the show.”
There was her family to consider. Scrutiny would increase. Hurtful or untrue things would be written. The kids would have to take more responsibility for themselves. “They are fully aware there are going to be times when I drop the ball and miss things and will potentially be tired and cranky.”
But the stars were aligning. And at 12 and 11, Bronte and Angus are more self-sufficient. So Gardner said yes. Straight away, paparazzi were on her doorstep. “It makes me feel sick to my stomach,” Gardner says; nevertheless, she and Baker teach their children to “smile, be polite, be courteous. I was walking up the street the other night with my daughter to get an ice-cream. She noticed it, I didn’t. I said, ‘Shall we turn around and go home?’ She took my arm and said calmly, ‘Mum, we are going to get an ice-cream.’”
Tongues wag when Gardner enters the supermarket, but she doesn’t mind. “People don’t think you notice, but you can tell,” she says. “Sometimes I have a bit of fun with it. You’re pushing the trolley and feel the eyes following you, and [you turn around and look at them] and go ‘Hi!’ – by and large, people are so lovely; they just want to chat.”
Gardner gets the same kind of physical criticism as every woman on TV. “You learn very quickly television is an aesthetic medium,” she says. “For me, it did take a bit of adjusting; I was someone who was always very self-conscious of my looks. I was the plain, chubby teenager who never in a million years would have dreamed of a career in TV. I don’t let it overwhelm me. In a way, I think I took some comfort in knowing I wasn’t hired for my looks, to be honest. I didn’t feel that pressure.”
The Baker-Gardners are only weeks into this brave new world, and still adjusting to the routine. So far, so good. “When I drive through those gates at Nine every morning, I think, ‘It’s good to be alive, it’s good to be awake,’” Gardner says. “It’s never lost on me what an extraordinary opportunity it is.”