‘You can’t like everyone, and everyone can’t like you’: Real reason Marcia Hines won’t be brutal on new season of Australian Idol

As a judge on Australian Idol in the 2000s, Marcia Hines helped discover Guy Sebastian and Jessica Mauboy. Now, the music legend returns to the reality TV series for its next era.

For seven seasons in the 2000s, Marcia Hines offered a mix of encouragement and constructive criticism to future stars such as Guy Sebastian and Jessica Mauboy as a judge on Australian Idol.

Now, the 70-year-old music legend returns to the series to pass judgement on a new crop of talent in 2024. But will she switch up her caring and pleasant persona for a more controversial critique? Not a chance. As Hines tells The Binge Guide, “It’s so easy to be kind.”

Marcia Hines knows how it feels to audition for Australian Idol. Like the thousands of hopefuls who lined up for their chance to sing on national TV in 2003 ahead of the show’s launch, Hines, Mark Holden and Ian “Dicko” Dickson also had to try out for their roles on the judging panel.

Kyle Sandilands, Marcia Hines and Amy Shark on set of the new series of Australian Idol. Picture: Seven

In their first moments together at a simulation of what the series would be like, “they had actors come in and pretend to audition”, Hines tells The Binge Guide. “It was Mark, Dicko and I on the desk and they wanted to hear what we would say to people. I remember one of them came in and was very badly dressed and I said, ‘I am sorry that we interrupted your gardening.’”

While reality-show competitors have often spoken about how their musical skills improved with mentoring and feedback, Hines says she’s also honed her performance as a judge. “You know, I am Jamaican, and they move slowly,” she says with a laugh. “And I remember there was a coach saying to me, ‘Can you gesticulate a bit more?’ Because I didn’t throw my hands up. But I learnt to.”

Two decades on, Hines is coming back full-time to the judging panel this year alongside radio host Kyle Sandilands and singer-songwriter Amy Shark, with Idol season two contestant Ricki-Lee Coulter returning as host.

Marcia Hines: ‘You can’t like everyone, and everyone can’t like you.’ Picture: Jeremy Piper

Hines says she now knows exactly what to look and listen for in a performance – and how to deliver a TV-worthy critique. It helps, she admits, that she has also given up paying attention to critics. “You can’t like everyone, and everyone can’t like you,” she explains. “That’s a good lesson for kids, because when you’re a kid, all you care about is how many friends you’ve got. Then you get into your teens, and it becomes that on steroids. And then you get into your 20s and you realise some of those people aren’t your friends. By your 30s and 40s, you’re more like, ‘You know what? I never liked you then, and I don’t like you now.’”

When Seven Network announced it was rebooting Australian Idol last year, it came under fire for the lack of diversity on its judging panel, which included Sandilands and Shark alongside US singers Harry Connick Jr and Meghan Trainor. Hines is nonplussed by the furore. “I watched [their] dynamic and I kind of got it,” she says. “Just because you’re a certain skin colour doesn’t mean you have to be on a television show. Women, we have to represent. We need a voice, and I think that’s very important. But the colour thing? If it’s tokenism, I don’t want to know about it.”

The full case of Idol in 2024: Radio shock jock Kyle Sandilands, co-host Ricki-Lee Coulter, Marcia Hines, Scott Tweedie (who also hosts with Coulter), and singer Amy Shark. Picture: Seven

Filming the new season has been smooth for Hines, since she and Sandilands were judges on the show together for four years (pictured left in 2007 with Holden, far left, and Dickson, centre). As for Shark, Hines reveals she got to know her through their mutual friend Russell Crowe. And she remains on good terms with her original co-stars following their shared experiences.

“I remember we did our first auditions in Perth and Dicko said, ‘I’m going to the pub,’” Hines recalls. “And Mark and I said, ‘Well, you had better enjoy it because pretty soon you won’t be able to go to the pub.’ He was like, ‘What do you mean?’ And I just told him, ‘Wait till this thing hits the screen.’ He didn’t know what fame was.”

She was right. More than 3.3 million people tuned in to see Guy Sebastian crowned the winner, but along the way, Dicko’s body-shaming of a then 21-year-old Paulini Curuenavuli also made headlines and became firmly etched into TV infamy. (Dickson has since admitted that he regrets some of his behaviour on the show.)

As for her view on judging contestants, Hines offers, “It’s so easy to be kind. It’s so hard to be nasty [because] you have to really think about what you’re going to say and how to put those words together and hope they annihilate the person. Why do you want to go there? And then it takes ages to rewind and fix that up. Words spoken in anger can’t be taken back. So be careful what you say.”

Australian Idol premieres tomorrow at 7.30pm on the Seven Network and 7Plus.