‘I don’t do as I’m told’: Nikki Osborne on why she’s going to shake up breakfast radio
She’s uncensored and unfiltered, and has landed one of the best roles in Brisbane breakfast radio but comedian Nikki Osborne has vowed to bring exactly what her bosses want: “disruptions”.
Sydney Weekend
Don't miss out on the headlines from Sydney Weekend. Followed categories will be added to My News.
She’s brash, ballsy and a self-confessed wildcard. She will make you laugh, even if it stings, and thrives on being uncensored and unfiltered.
So, who better to be dealt one of the biggest jobs in breakfast radio, joining Ash Bradnam and David “Luttsy” Lutteral on Brisbane’s Nova 106.9, than Nikki Osborne?
“The bosses said they want disruption, so disruption is what they shall get,” says Osborne, who replaces Susie O’Neill for the new-look show, Ash, Luttsy and Nikki Osborne, launching on Monday morning.
Nova approached the Queensland-born comedian, 42, for the gig in September last year while she was on the school run with her sons, Will, 16, and Teddy, 12.
It’s fair to say Osborne, a woman who says nothing has ever come easily in her career, was baffled. “I still believed no one was ballsy enough to take such a big commercial leap of faith with me because I don’t play by the rules and I don’t do as I’m told,” she says.
It’s taken her more than two decades of a relentless career in film and television to land an offer like this, a golden gig for a comedian, yet despite it falling into her hands, it wasn’t an immediate “yes”.
“It took a lot of soul searching, I wasn’t immediately on board because I’ve always worked in television, I had my plan and then this came out of left field,” she says.
“I’ve been my own boss since 2006, so the idea of entering into a big company where you have bosses and you are regulated scared the absolute shit out of me.”
She had made plans to build the comedy series she’d written, Bush Barbie, in America but after discussions with her kids and husband Jeremy Starr, 49, a landscape architect who’s run her YouTube channel for the past year, everyone was in agreement.
“My family all thought that this would be really good for me to have a work family and to have a base and something that’s not so transient and unpredictable,” she says.
It’s a new era for Nova’s flagship show, and where O’Neill, who held the role for more than 10 years, may have been the calm, Osborne promises to bring the chaos.
“I’m the annoying sister, ha!” she teases of her obvious and easy dynamic with her co-hosts.
“I think people will want to tune in to see where it’s going to go today and I think that’s exciting that there could be a show that’s a little on the edge every morning.”
There were others in the running, she thinks, with rumours former Channel 7 newsreader Kendall Gilding and former reality TV star and radio host Sam Frost were top contenders.
Neither are like Osborne so she thought they would opt for someone else.
“But then they called saying, ‘Oh we loved that, come back and do it again’,” she says of her first chemistry test.
“I still want to know, who, and at what point, said: ‘We want THAT person’!
“I feel they’re doing a George Costanza and they’re going against their better judgment and they’re putting in a complete wildcard and they’re just going to hold on and see what happens.”
Osborne’s disbelief comes from years of being told she’s too rough and unpredictable for mainstream roles which, she jokes, she’s started to believe. “I’m lacking a bit of a filter,” she laughs. “I’ll definitely have to watch my language because I know there will be kids in the car and I don’t want to be that feral drunk aunty that you can’t have your children around.
“I am worried the old f —k will fall out just naturally … that is my main concern.”
The other is the commute. Osborne plans to keep her base on the Sunshine Coast, where she lives with her family in a Mooloolaba waterfront property after moving north from Melbourne in 2020, and drive the daily hour-plus journey each way to Brisbane leaving at 4am. “The show itself, I’m absolutely pumped for, but the commute scares the bejesus out of me because that’s a lot. I’m going to get dizzy.
“When I realise it’s all too hard I’ll probably get a place in Brisbane a few nights a week.”
It’s classic Osborne to never opt for the easy route. She loves to defy expectations.
She’s spent a career playing up her Barbie-like looks, making shows and characters around it, to prove a point it’s possible to simultaneously be “one of the blokes” and wear pink sequins.
Her profile has risen from her appearances on I’m a Celebrity … Get me Out of Here in 2020 and Dancing with the Stars last year, where she was a finalist.
But the comedian and Qweekend columnist credits her sharp observations for putting her on people’s radar. “Social media has changed the goalposts … I study it a lot and I can see what people really latch on to and what goes viral and what irritates people and if you can find those little pressure points and squeeze, you get people’s interest.”
Osborne most certainly has people’s interestand it’s on full display behind the scenes of Qweekend’s cover shoot. One moment she’s delivering zingers leaving everyone in stitches, the next she’s rendering them speechless with her vulnerability. It’s the work of a pro and a woman who’s lived many lives. The trained actor of more than 20 years. A rising star on the verge of a breakthrough. A mother turned carer for her youngest son diagnosed with autism.
The controversial comedian constantly criticised. The fighter who was chased down by two men after a gig.
Now, as she adds radio host to that list, she says she willshow us all how she turns it into entertainment. Osborne’s story begins like so many comedians before her, with a love of making people laugh.
She was four when she recalls getting her first kick out of it. “I used to put on Michael Jackson shows at our family barbecues,” she says.
“I’d set up spotlights from outside and I’d put coloured cellophane over them and throw talcum powder out to create the smoky effect, then I’d slide out and moonwalk.”
Osborne grew up in Redcliffe, north of Brisbane, with her older sister, Renee, now an occupational therapist, and their parents, Wayne, 77, and Lesley, 71. While she was a born performer, she was also a sporty kid as the school sports captain and softball captain in her primary school. Theirs was an active household full of fishing and golf with her dad.
“He wanted me to be the next Karrie Webb,” jokes Osborne, who went to Grace Lutheran College in Rothwell.
“He named me after Niki Lauda, the formula one race car driver, so he had other plans. I was meant to be a boy so I did all the boy things but the call to the stage was too strong.”
She followed that call after school, studying a bachelor degree in acting at the Queensland University of Technology.
In her final year performance, she picked up an agent, and at 20, moved to Sydney with big dreams and all the promise of a rising star.
In her wildest dreams, she was to move to Los Angeles, marry Leonardo DiCaprio and make movies. In her humble reality, she was a struggling actor. There were some wins, however, including in 2004 when she landed her first major role in the TV miniseries, The Mystery of Natalie Wood, shot in Sydney.
The director, Peter Bogdanovich, suggested she move to Los Angeles and with the benefit of hindsight, she should’ve listened.
“There was myself, Rachael Taylor, Sophie Monk and Natalie Bassingthwaighte, we were the ones cast in it, they all went to LA and I didn’t, they all took off, and I didn’t,” she says.
“I probably should’ve gone to LA.”
She stayed and eventually did score a part in Bryce Courtenay’s TV adaptation of his book, Jessica, but mostly, it was commercials.
“One minute I’m doing Athlete’s Foot, the next minute I’m doing Reading Cinemas, next thing I’m doing McCain pizza, then I’m doing whatever for whoever would have me.”
It wasn’t for a lack of determination and persistence, with Osborne wishing her big break was only a phone call away. It so nearly was, with a career riddled with near-misses.
“I almost got the lead role in National Treasure with Nicolas Cage, then I almost got the lead role in Gothika alongside Halle Berry,” she begins the list. “I got down to the wire and I was cast in Power Rangers, and was told to get my passport, and then it changed last minute and they decided to go American.
“Oh, Lost (the TV series), top two for Lost … and Neighbours. I was up for that role, me and Delta (Goodrem) and me and Rose Byrne always auditioned against one another.
“So I’ve had a lot of nearly, could’ve, would’ve, should’ve moments.”
It taught Osborne a lot about herself and the world, of how to handle the knocks and how to rebound. “I was arrogant enough to know, their mistake, you losers!” she laughs.
Mostly though, she says, it taught her to create her own chances. So in 2006, she packed up and moved to Melbourne on a whim.
Within weeks she met Starr by chance at the races. “Once I realised he wasn’t gay, just British, it was on,” she says. “He is Mr Sheffield and I am Fran Fine. He is really refined and distinguished and very well educated and knows everything about everything.”
Then in another twist of fate, after just walking out of an unsuccessful audition for a chainsaw ad and taking a break at one of the city’s hotels, she saw an opportunity. “I sat down and had a scotch to drown my sorrows and contemplate where my life was at, and I saw there was a shindig happening,” she says. A waiter told her it was a Channel 9 party celebrating Eddie McGuire’s recent appointment as their CEO.
“So I’m sitting there and I’m like: Do I? Don’t I? Do I? Don’t I? and yes, I do,” she says with a wry smile.
“I climbed over the bollards and broke into the party and marched up to Eddie McGuire, introduced myself and shook his hand and said: ‘Where the f —k is our Australian drama?’”
Osborne demanded he cast her in a show (he’d recently commissioned Underbelly) but instead he asked if she could host.
And after three rounds of interviews came her biggest break yet as the host of Channel 9’s now defunct late-night quiz show, Quizmania. It would also launch her comedy career.
She frequently tells the story of how the phones went down one night forcing her to ad lib her way through two hours of the show. At home watching was Australian comedian Mick Molloy. So impressed by her wit and improv skills, he invited her to be a writer and performer on his sketch show, The Nation.
But just as her career was finally taking off, she was thrown a curveball and at 25, found out she was pregnant with her first child.
“It was not in the brochure, it was not the plan, I was in the frame to host So you Think You can Dance and all of these opportunities were opening up,” she says.
“I had these endorsements lined up and then it all ended within two weeks.”
It’s a sad symptom of the times, she says, of how little respect and opportunity women were given, especially in a field dominated by men.
Osborne pauses, only now appreciating that time in her life for what it was. “I didn’t realise at the time how shit it was, but it was pretty bad,” she says. “It was before it was cool to be pregnant like Katherine Heigl in Knocked Up, we weren’t there yet, it was bad news. Nobody wanted me, it was forced time off.”
Her career, as she says, “was toast”, and when Will was 18 months, she enrolled in advertising school with plans to branch into marketing. To help fund her studies she dipped her toe in the TV industry as a Dealette (the wig-wearing briefcase holders) on Deal or No Deal.
But her priority had firmly shifted to being a mum and in 2012, she and her husband welcomed their second son, Teddy. But the curveballs kept coming. He was six months old when she noticed his milestones were delayed and felt something wasn’t right.
Osborne says Teddy was formally diagnosed with autism at the age of four. “You go through all the stages, denial is always the first one … then you’re sad because you’re worried and you fast-forward through all the years ahead and think all the worst possible things,” she says. “Then you knuckle down and research the shit out of everything.” It was a combination of hard work, medicine, health and diet which she says saw Teddy improve and now says he’s a healthy, happy, well-adjusted 12-year-old thriving at school.
Meanwhile, her career took a back seat. While focusing on being a mum, she took a four-year deal with health insurance company Australian Unity to be the face of their advertising campaigns, and waited for her time to dive back into acting.
When she did, in 2017, she landed a role as Delvene Delaney in miniseries, Hoges: The Paul Hogan Story. When the series tanked in the ratings, she was dropped, and that was the
final straw.
“I went for an angry walk and stormed back into the house and said ‘That’s it, I’m not auditioning for anything ever again, I’m going to do comedy.’” And so began her next chapter.
Osborne spent most of 2017 writing her first stand-up show, On the Spectrum.
It’s a show she is proud of and one she says made light, not fun of, life raising a child who was both brilliant and challenging. But she was not prepared for the public reaction.
Within 24 hours of announcing the show online, she became one of the most controversial comedians in Australia.
“I had 500 messages of hate and a petition to shut the show down, just from the poster,”
she says.
“I’m like, give me a break universe, I had worked so hard on it and I knew it was a good show. I knew it was a very well-meaning show.
“I was so incensed that people were stepping in between me and my son like they knew better, I wanted to punch everyone in the face.”
On her opening night in 2018 in Melbourne, the crowd was full of protesters and media but she ignored the overwhelming voices telling her to cancel. The show went on to be a huge success, selling out venues across the country, but as the vitriol continued, she couldn’t take it, and pulled the tour after six shows.
“They were saying ‘you’re a fascist’, ‘you’re evil’, ‘you’re a shit comedian for punching down’, ‘you’re a terrible mother’, ‘your son hates you’,” she says.
“I’ve always had trolling but hundreds of messages a day, it was just too much.”
Osborne’s come to expect the controversy, in fact, she now lives for the inappropriate.
One time she was dumped from Channel 9 after making a risque gag on air.
Then there’s the time media personality Abbie Chatfield publicly slammed her for a questionable meme she posted (and now deleted) featuring Harvey Weinstein in relation to the Covid vaccine.
Then came her stint on OnlyFans, where she earned $10,000 a day, in a publicity stunt to raise money for a koala charity. None of it ever serious, she says, all of it for the laugh.
She can handle the haters. There are enough fans now willing to defend her antics, she laughs.
But with her rising profile has come a dark side to fame.
For the first time, Osborne details the harrowing night she feared for her life in 2019.
It was about 11pm and she had just finished a gig at Brisbane City Hall for her Bad Barbie tour. She walked out the back stage door on to King George Square where two men were sitting nearby. They called for her attention.
“They said ‘Come here’ and I was like ‘I’ve got to go, I’ve got an Uber’ and they said, ‘No, get here now’,” she recounts.
“I start walking over and then he pulled something out and I’m like, ‘What the f —k’, so I started moving and they yelled, ‘Get back here.’
“I just knew it was not good and I turned around and I started bolting through the square and they started chasing me.”
Osborne’s unsure what was in the man’s pocket but thought it was a knife. “They kept coming so I kept running down the street and then saw my Uber pulling up and I ran to the middle of the road, dived into the car and then just fell apart.”
Osborne shudders to think what would’ve happened if they caught her.
She says she believes she would have been “buried in a shallow grave, if I’m honest”.
She’s never left a gig alone since.
But this is a woman who copes with humour.
Being a stand-up comedian, all of it becomes material at some point, and the next night she added a joke about it into her set. It’s how it always goes. The heartbreaking, gut-punching, gloriously absurd moments of her life are spun into punchlines. And now, she will be doing it behind a microphone, where she will continue thriving in a world of untamed possibility.
“Everyone has had enough of being precious so I think I’m being rewarded for staying authentic,” she says.
“The world is very PC but then Trump just got in and everything has gone out the window, so I figure that is a go-wild card.”
Originally published as ‘I don’t do as I’m told’: Nikki Osborne on why she’s going to shake up breakfast radio
What your child’s name says about you
Naming your child is a major responsibility: many can’t help but choose something so absurd they will never be overlooked, writes Nikki Osborne.
‘I saw a lot of students drop out’: The program keeping kids in school
A child’s ability to have a good education should not depend on their family income or circumstances, The Smith Family believes. Their Learning for Life program is helping children experiencing disadvantage, like Jaidyn Shelby, to reach their full potential