Georgie Gardner: ‘Nobody wanted the truth’
After enduring months of unprecedented scrutiny and vicious rumours, the Today show’s Georgie Gardner sets the record straight on Ubergate, her relationship with Karl Stefanovic and what she thinks about his new marriage.
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It was late 2018. As a year of falling ratings and unprecedented scrutiny was drawing to a close, and with the Today show team about to head off on their summer holidays, its co-hosts sat down for a meal.
In what Georgie Gardner describes as a “knees up”, she and Karl Stefanovic, along with their other halves, went out for a long lunch. There was another pressing reason for the celebration: despite being invited to Stefanovic’s wedding to bride-to-be Jasmine Yarbrough in early December, Gardner was heading overseas with her family and wouldn’t be able to attend.
“I wasn’t in a position to do both,” Gardner tells Stellar. “So the four of us went out and had a lovely lunch and I gave him a wedding gift of a cheese knife, handmade by a friend. I think I said in the card, ‘Enjoy using this with the best cheese you can find because I believe all problems can be solved over a cheese platter.’”
Two months later, and as she begins a new year with a new co-host after arguably the most unsparing shake-up in recent television history, Gardner’s gift could be construed by some as symbolic in an industry where “knifings” and “bonings” are as brutal as a butcher’s shop.
That the potential irony of the gift doesn’t even cross her mind reflects the gulf between the soap opera narrative captured by constant headlines and the very real human emotions felt by those involved.
Gardner is the last woman standing after the Nine Network not so much dead-headed its flagship breakfast show, but razed it to the roots. Stefanovic, newsreader Sylvia Jeffreys, sports reporter Tim Gilbert and entertainment veteran Richard Wilkins have all been replaced by a new line-up, which executives hope will stem the plummeting ratings.
For the first time two women are now helming the show, with Gardner joined by the assured Deborah Knight as co-host, while Tom Steinfort, Tony Jones, and Brooke Boney cover news, sport and entertainment respectively.
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Gardner, 48, has been retained not only because she is one of the most respected and experienced hosts in commercial television, but because she offers solidity and continuity to a network buffeted by the private life of its most recognisable star.
Married for 16 years to fund manager Tim Baker, and mum to Bronte, 13, and Angus, 12, she is something of a touchstone for viewers who appreciate her authenticity and warmth. Her job will be to propel Today forward from last year’s mire, but as she sits down to clear the air with Stellar, she’s insistent on clearing up a few mistruths.
First up, she wants it to be known that she doesn’t “hate” Stefanovic. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” she says emphatically.
“Ask anyone who knows us individually or as an on-air team, there was never any hate. All year I kept reading comments that apparently I hated him but no-one ever asked me directly, and you know why? Because they didn’t want the truth. It might’ve disrupted the tantalising narrative of Georgie and Karl.”
While Stefanovic and his previous co-host, Lisa Wilkinson, were one of breakfast television’s most successful pairings, Gardner believes she and Stefanovic set out at the beginning of last year equally determined to make their partnership work.
“I took it on [the job] with enormous hope and confidence that we’d be a really formidable and appealing partnership, but there were two things I wasn’t prepared for: the intense and unrelenting interest in Karl’s personal life and the ongoing false narrative that Karl and I didn’t get along.”
Gardner sighs. “We have a very solid friendship. There’s love, there’s respect, there’s a lot of goodwill and, like all authentic relationships, you take the rough with the smooth. We might have different opinions and we were absolutely capable of having some robust discussions, but there was also a hell of a lot of laughs and so much support.
“Maybe I was naïve; I thought the truth would prevail and the lies would dissipate, but management came to the realisation at the end of the year that we just couldn’t get any clear air. Something had to give, but we were both really, really sad because we wanted it to work.”
Of all the idiosyncrasies of modern television, perhaps the most perplexing is the focus on breakfast show hosts.
The interest generated around those referred to on a first name basis — Karl, Kochie, Sam, Georgie, Nat and now Deb — is disproportionate to the number of viewers they attract, with the hosts of high-rating primetime programs not subject to anywhere near the same scrutiny as their morning counterparts are.
The relentless interest in whether Gardner and her former co-host were at loggerheads was only further fuelled by the “Ubergate” scandal in March last year, where an Uber driver overheard Karl telling his brother, Peter Stefanovic, that Gardner was a “fence-sitter”.
When Stefanovic’s ex-wife Cassandra Thorburn later suggested Gardner was “paid off” by the Nine Network after being publicly embarrassed, network executives were forced to strenuously deny the claim.
Gardner won’t address Thorburn’s comments except to say they were defamatory, an “outright lie” and that a “warning has been put out”. As for Stefanovic’s Ubergate comments, she says she wasn’t fazed.
“I pride myself on being measured, considering my responses and not shooting from the hip, so to be accused of being a fence-sitter didn’t offend me at all.”
When her co-host came to see her, “mortified and apologising profusely”, Gardner says she told him she was only annoyed he hadn’t told her to her face. They had an arrangement, she tells Stellar, that they would communicate any problems.
As for Stefanovic’s marriage break-up and the downfall it triggered, she’s pragmatic. “I’m very disappointed that this is the level of scrutiny we now come under. Plenty of marriages fail — isn’t it one in three? — but that’s life, we’re all fallible. He [Karl] would be the first to agree that there are a few decisions he’d make differently if he had his time again, but wouldn’t we all?
“Karl is one of Australia’s most gifted broadcasters and he cared deeply about that job,” adds Gardner. “There were days when he would come to work pretty broken by being chased by the paparazzi and the lies being peddled. I tried to be a bit of a big sister and show him love and kindness because I knew behind the scenes...”
And at that, Gardner — who has always brought a deep sense of empathy to her on-air role — starts crying. “There’s children involved and people are so quick to judge,” she continues, her voice catching. “Lies get written suggesting in this case that he left his wife for a younger woman. The relationship with Jasmine came after leaving his marriage.”
But now it’s time to look forward, not back. As Gardner and the team finished their much-scrutinised second day back on air earlier this month, the host checked her phone and saw a text from Stefanovic.
“It was a beautiful message about me and the show and I was incredibly touched,” she says. “I do think he’s about to start a very happy chapter of his personal life and I’m really thrilled for him.”
For Gardner and Knight, the challenge will be to win back the female heartland, though Gardner says the fact her co-host is a woman is inconsequential. “It’s an encouraging sign that Nine management — and let’s not beat about the bush, Nine at times has been accused of being a boys’ club — have chosen the best candidate based on their credentials rather than gender.”
As a “proud feminist” Gardner feels privileged to be part of such progress, and she’s keen to continue featuring people at the coalface of issues, not just the “white noise” of opinion makers.
“We’ve got a big challenge ahead of us as we always do in this game, but it feels exciting, innovative and fresh. Deb brings vast journalistic and life experience, she has a warm and affable demeanour, she’s familiar with our audience and we thoroughly like and respect each other, so she was the obvious choice.”
She admits to having had a quick look at some of the early feedback. “Some are just nasty and derogatory. ‘Are you going to have segments on tampons next?’ and ‘You must hate men.’ I’m choosing to put that to one side and focus on all the wonderful positives.”
If Gardner feels a burden of responsibility — she confesses to barely sleeping the night before her first day back — it’s a place she’s been before. For behind the lively brown eyes, wide smile and pitch-perfect broadcaster’s voice, is a woman who’s endured some emotional heavy lifting.
Growing up in Perth, she blamed herself when her parents divorced when she was only five, and she describes the years that followed as tumultuous and unpleasant. In Year 1 she remembers a teacher telling her: “Georgie Gardner, you walk around like you have the world on your shoulders.”
Personally and professionally, she’s also faced challenges. She and Baker wanted more children, but after two miscarriages, which took her to a “very deep and dark place” she had to accept she wouldn’t have another baby.
She also reminds Stellar that she, too, has suffered the ignominy of being “unceremoniously dumped” from breakfast television. From 2000 to 2002, she hosted Sunrise with Mark Beretta before being moved on to make way for David Koch and Melissa Doyle.
She was so bruised, she considered stepping away from television altogether, so she can empathise with her former Today colleagues. “The media can be brutal and no-one wants to see anyone left floundering or feeling left out. But it’s a chance to learn and grow and develop. The dust does settle, the sun does still come up and it can be a valuable life lesson.”
As she approaches 50, it seems Gardner has nailed two of the key components of a contented life: she has learnt how to be present and she keeps things in perspective. She’s deeply saddened that she lost her father prematurely when he was 52, and so counts every day as a blessing.
“I’d rather be 50 than not,” she says simply of the looming milestone.
Having chosen to leave her job at Today once before, her work is not the axis on which her world pivots. Rather, her children are front and centre and while they’re increasingly self-sufficient, she knows the teenage years will require her to be more tuned in to their emotional needs.
“I love them more than anything in the world and being a parent is without question my most important role.”
The support of a husband who shoulders half the parenting duties helps her cope with the gruelling early starts and lack of sleep — but it’s a quiet moment at the end of the day that Gardner treasures.
Walking the family dog Wilbur — a Portuguese water dog, like those owned by the Obamas — is her tonic.
“Once I’ve done the afternoon routine with the kids, I put the dog on the lead, leave my phone and everything behind and just walk with him,” she says. “I think about the day that’s been, what worked and what hasn’t, and I anticipate the day to come.”
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