Sam Armytage on married life, why not having kids is used against her
In a remarkably candid interview, Sunrise host Samantha Armytage opens up about newly married life and why not having children has been used against her at work.
Stellar
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Like most busy women, Samantha Armytage didn’t think to check the pockets when she recently stuffed a load into the washing machine.
In fact, it wasn’t until the end of the cycle when she heard the familiar “clunk, clunk, clunk” that she realised a phone had inadvertently gone through the wash. Grabbing it from the drum, she raced from her country home into the nearest telco store in town.
“I’ve accidentally put my husband’s phone through the washing machine,” she explained to the shop assistant.
And then she smiled to herself.
Husband. She liked the sound of it. Liked the feel of it. As she tells Stellar in her first in-depth interview since her impromptu wedding on the last day of 2020 to retired farmer Richard Lavender: “There were probably times when I thought, ‘Am I ever going to say the word ‘husband’?’”
Freshly married, deeply in love, back in the thick of breakfast television after a bittersweet year and with an exciting new project on the horizon, “husband” isn’t the only new word in the Sunrise host’s lexicon as she begins wedded life.
She’s equally thrilled with being a “Mrs” and while she’ll stick with her own name for work, she’ll adopt her husband’s for everything else.
“Privately, we’re the Lavenders,” she says, beaming. “I hadn’t thought too much about being Mrs Lavender, but it’s a lovely feeling. I have a real sense of peace and security.”
For the best part of a decade, Armytage has been one of the most eligible women on television. In fact, when she replaced Melissa Doyle on Seven’s Sunrise couch almost eight years ago, her Today competitor Karl Stefanovic jokingly asked over a shared drink how he would win over the male viewers now?
Stories about the ratings race between the feuding networks were soon eclipsed by gossipy tales about Armytage’s love life as she was paired, in imaginations at least, with everyone from Russell Crowe and Harry Styles to Modern Family’s Eric Stonestreet.
Her wedding to Lavender has put paid to all that. Organised in three days and witnessed by just 10 guests, the quiet and heartfelt celebration rounded out a tumultuous year marked by the death of Armytage’s beloved mother, Libby, and her father, Mac, suffering a stroke. If there was any year the accomplished and independent journalist needed the love of a partner, it was 2020.
“Somehow he was put in my life before all this happened,” she says of the events of the past year. “He’s so wonderful and calm, there was no way I could have got through everything I’ve been through in the past six months without him.”
If Armytage’s story offers hope to any women searching for “the one”, it may also encourage them to be selective. “I’m really proud that I didn’t settle. I held out,” the 44-year-old says candidly.
“When I met Rich it was like a sliding doors moment when I thought, ‘OK, so this is how you can make your life better.’ I knew deep down that some of the men I chose previously weren’t good choices. I fell into this job and career, and sometimes that takes you away from who you are and what you grew up with. And with that sort of profile you can attract the wrong people sometimes.”
Lavender, 61, a divorced father of two grown-up daughters, was introduced to her by a friend in April 2019. Like Armytage, he loves country life, horses, skiing and travelling.
The machinations of breakfast television, where his new girlfriend was a key player, meant nothing to him and he had to watch Sunrise to fully grasp what she did. Yet the retired farmer didn’t simply offer love and companionship, he represented a return to the simple life she had grown up with, a long way from the glamour and gossip of television.
Those two very different lives were captured on her wedding day, hastily arranged after Armytage’s dad wondered out loud why they were waiting.
The chic white Carla Zampatti dress and Jimmy Choo shoes may have been a nod to Armytage’s city life, but the rose petals grabbed from a bunch of flowers on the kitchen table and the Blundstones she slipped into for photos in the paddock were pure country.
Finding love, she says, has brought both joy and contentment. “There’s so much hope in my heart now,” Armytage tells Stellar. “I look forward to the future. Every morning I wake up with Richard I think whatever happens it’s going to be a good day because I’ve got my mate here. We’re going to have a fun life.”
Splitting her time between Sydney and the couple’s farm in the NSW Southern Highlands 90 minutes south of the city has naturally driven speculation that she may be ready to quit the high-profile breakfast show she’s helmed with David Koch since 2013.
She’s always said she had no intention of trying to match Doyle’s 15 years as the host of Sunrise and, as she tells Stellar, she never envisaged television being the full focus of her life. In fact, she says wryly, she’s one of the few people in television who wants less attention, not more.
“I don’t think any of us want to do the same thing forever. There’s a lot about television that’s all about you and that’s an awful way to live your life. TV isn’t a place that’s necessarily very healthy,” she says, before adding with a grin: “It’s full of sociopaths and narcissists – it can be a dangerous environment, let me tell you.”
She believes being single up until recently meant her job occupied more of her time than it should. “Bosses don’t ask as much of you if you’re a wife or mother,” she argues. “I’ve never shied away from hard work, but there was an expectation that Sam would do it because she’s got nothing else going on. [Sometimes I’d think] ‘Well, actually, I’d get something else going on if you didn’t make me do this.’”
Much to her delight, she’s about to add another string to her bow in hosting a new weekly podcast for Stellar titled Something To Talk About with Samantha Armytage.
She looks forward to canvassing a wide range of topics – from resilience and grief to feminism and fame – with a line-up of experts, famous friends and everyday Australians among her weekly guests, and tackling an unexpected array of subjects in a conversational but in-depth forum.
“I feel really deeply that my creative side isn’t being used as much as it should,” she says. “The podcast came to me at a fantastic time and it’s a wonderful, wonderful vehicle for storytelling, which is why I got into journalism. I’m not in it for the selfies and make-up.”
She hopes the format will offer plenty of freedom to not only dig deep into issues, but also thrash out various viewpoints.
“We’re getting to the point in the media where you can’t say a lot. It’s not as much fun as it used to be because there’s so much outrage. Everyone is so woke and no-one is saying what they actually think because they’re frightened. If you say what the average Australian is thinking on air, you get hammered for it by the vocal minority.”
And she’s keen to spend time behind a microphone rather than on a television screen, saying she hopes to bring the empathy and femininity she’s managed to retain in the newsroom.
“That’s not an easy thing to do,” she points out. “It’s a very masculine world so women go into their masculine when they’re in these environments and if you show any common female traits such as vulnerability, emotion or empathy you get trodden on. But I’ve just gone out and done my thing.”
Sarrah Le Marquand, Stellar’s founding editor-in-chief, believes Armytage – who has written a monthly column for the magazine since 2017 – will bring fearlessness, humour and much-needed unpredictability to the podcast, which launches today.
“One of the hardest things any commentator in 2021 is faced with is how to balance being respectful and empathetic alongside a willingness to tackle difficult issues and not be scared off by the negative feedback you might cop for voicing an opinion,” Le Marquand observes.
“Sam has always been comfortable sharing genuine insights into her life with readers – obviously being beamed into people’s living rooms every morning will do that to a person! – but I think she has increasingly shown a more vulnerable side over the past year or two, and that’s something I suspect she will explore even further over the year ahead.”
Certainly, Armytage brings a life full of experiences, including becoming a stepmother to Lavender’s two daughters, aged 19 and 23 – “they’ve welcomed me with open arms”, Armytage says – and the devastating loss of her mother, aged just 68.
In the middle of last year the host was running between two hospitals after her mum suffered heart failure due to an autoimmune disease and her dad had a stroke. But if that was challenging, it was nothing compared to the onslaught of grief when her mum passed away in November.
“It’s still very raw,” she says quietly, tears tumbling down her cheeks. “Losing your mother is such a huge thing. It doesn’t matter how old you are. The hardest bit is when you get through all the immediate grief and then there’s that ongoing feeling where you go to call them to tell them something and you can’t.”
One thing she’s grateful for is that her mum passed knowing her eldest daughter was loved. And however rushed her wedding preparations, Armytage made sure there was a picture of Libby close by as she took her vows. “She was very relieved when I finally met someone so decent,” she says. “She adored Rich.”
Armytage will channel her mum on the podcast – “unfortunately or fortunately, I’ve inherited her intolerance of fools and idiots” – and she may even have to take discussion ideas from her new husband. She laughs as she describes how Lavender accompanied her to the first meeting with the podcast team.
“He hadn’t had breakfast so there he was, biting into his egg and bacon burger, with egg dripping down his shirt, suggesting we talk about Rugby Union.” She raises an eyebrow: “I’m new to this whole husband business.”
He, meanwhile, is new to her lifestyle but is good-natured when she rises at 3am to head to work. While she says splitting their week between the city and the country isn’t sustainable in the long-term, they’re making it work for now.
What matters, she tells Stellar, is how she feels as she arrives at their farm at the end of the working week. “It feels like I’ve come home,” she says of her marital abode. “I’ve totally come home.”
Something To Talk About with Samantha Armytage launches today with new episodes released every Sunday. In episode one, Sam catches up with Hugh Sheridan for a raw, open and very funny sit-down.
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