MasterChef judge Melissa Leong on the question she doesn’t like to be asked

MasterChef judge Melissa Leong opens up about family, fame, and the importance of setting boundaries that separate you from your work.

Maybe it’s a function of being the child of migrant parents, but career – and doing well in that chosen work – is incredibly important to me.

Knowing how much was sacrificed to give me the opportunity to find the thing that lights me up isn’t lost on me, and it’s something I know a lot of people can relate to, whether their parents arrived here in Australia recently or not.

“I don’t really like being asked how I feel about being a ‘household name’.” (Picture: Cameron Grayson)

When I finished school, I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I grew up. Developing a shoulder injury from playing piano as a teen took the goal of concert pianist (the only thing I wanted to do at the time) off the table, so you can imagine how stressed I was at the prospect of not making my parents proud.

My journey into the world of work after that was a bit more piecemeal than I would have liked, and it took a while to find the place in the world where I truly felt I belonged. From make-up and advertising, to media, freelance food-writing, radio and now television, I’m happy to say that I finally feel like I’ve found my feet.

Sure, it might feel a bit weird that as a self-classified introvert, I feel most at home in a job that beams me into millions of homes around the world, but in a way, it makes perfect sense.

“I feel most at home in a job that beams me into millions of homes around the world.” (Picture: Getty)

I get to go to work every day on the set of MasterChef Australia with a world-class, tight-knit group of people – which was a well-established family long before Jock [Zonfrillo], Andy [Allen] and I came to play. But the closed studio environment and the magic created within somehow provides a safe space in which I feel like I can truly be myself.

I don’t really like being asked how I feel about being a “household name”. I said yes to doing a job that I felt I could do justice to, and while I know popularity is a function of that success, the whole notion of fame makes me deeply uncomfortable as it’s not something I place any stock in.

Instead, I want to focus on doing a good job and continuing to revel in teasing open the stories of others, through the lens of food.

“Boundaries” is a theme I’ve noticed in the Zeitgeist lately and I have to say, I’m all about it. Whether your job puts you in the public eye or not, being able to leave your work at work and come home to a different pace of life seems to me not only logical, but sustainable.

Melissa Leong features in this Sunday’s Stellar.

My new-found rule for living isn’t always easy to abide by – I like to research for the show and write pieces like these on my days away from set, but it’s nevertheless something to strive for.

At the end of the day, while we’re all looking for a guru or an answer to life’s inevitable onslaught of ups and downs, the thing I try to tell myself is to be kind – to myself, to those around me, to those I don’t know.

The roller-coaster out of the dumpster-fire that was 2020 continues to see us in more uncertain times than many years past, and very little of it is under our control.

What is under control is how we respond. And I can’t help but think that if it’s with a little more empathy and understanding that perhaps we might emerge from it all a little better for it.

Melissa Leong is a judge on MasterChef Australia, which is coming soon to Network Ten.