Rove McManus and Tasma Walton move to Bronte and talk about new show
ACTOR, producer and comedian Rove McManus has had a busy few years, living in Perth, Melbourne and then LA. He talks about his new show and becoming an eastern suburbs local.
ROVE McManus is talking about Mango and Crush.
Not the slushie variety, but the two resident macaws that swoop around the foreshore and playground at Bronte Beach, two of his favourite spots to hang out with four-year-old daughter, Ruby.
“I got their backstory,” he says, sipping a macchiato along the Bronte cafe strip. “Someone else owns them, but this guys who trains them is like a dog walker for giant exotic parrots. You know the people who are not locals because they are the ones marvelling at them. One of them is okay with people, but I think it’s Crush who is the grumpy one.”
At 44, Perth-born McManus — long-time Melbourne then LA resident and now eastern suburbs local and bird nerd — has found a new place to call home.
After years of roaming the world and dealing with his share of personal heartache, his family of three is complete, settled, and he couldn’t be more content.
He’s back on our screens each week hosting Show Me The Movie! — a quiz show with a panel of comedic talent in the tradition of Spicks and Specks, but focused on films instead of music — that premiered last week on Ten. It’s put the triple-Gold-Logie-winning TV presenter and his wife, actor Tasma Walton, back in the spotlight.
McManus, who lost his wife actor Belinda Emmett to breast cancer in 2006 and married Tasma in 2009, is not sure how he’ll handle the paparazzi lenses camping out on his lawn this time around.
ROVE MCMANUS NEW SHOW
“I struggle with it. I don’t know if it’s still as bad as it used to be,” he says. “Tasma and I talk about the fact we feel we’re boring people now, there’s nothing more to give. Our tabloid story is over. We’re now happily married with a little girl. That’s it.”
There will be no more babies, either.
“We’re one and done,” he says, laughing. “You raise a child at 40, it’s not an easy thing to do — it keeps you fit! As far as the tabloids go, there’s far more interesting people to make up lies about it.”
There’s little doubt the actor, producer (his company Roving Enterprises produces The Project) and comedian is one of the most powerful men in television. His TV talk show Rove Live aired for a decade, then he hosted Rove LA in LA. He also appeared on The Tonight Show and did a stint on 2DayFM breakfast.
But he insists fame was never what drove him.
“I like entertaining, I like making people feel good. It’s not for the adulation,” he says.
“As wonderful as it is to get the recognition and appreciation for what you do, I’m equally happy to get it from someone who walks up and says, ‘Hi, I really love what you do’ as I am to get a Logie.”
He values his privacy and has an inner circle of trusted friends, including long term collaborator and fellow Ten funny man, Peter Hellier.
“It was love at first sight,” The Project’s Hellier says of meeting Rove early in their careers on the comedy circuit, where they both cut their teeth.
“I remember doing a spot quite early on at a comedy room and I got a tap on my shoulder afterwards, and it was Rove telling me ‘That was really great’. We had a couple of beers out the back, it was like a first date. We were married at first sight! And he’s been a great friend ever since.”
Rove got Hellier involved in community television and, when the networks came calling, took him along.
“He’s remained the same guy,” Hellier says. “Despite being one of the biggest names in the biz — and technically he was my boss and still is — he has never made me feel that was the case.”
His daughter, he says, is cheeky and shares several of his traits: “She’s very funny and she has wonderful comic timing. Plus, she’s clumsy, but then so am I. If Tasma is on one side of the house and she hears a cry, she’ll call out, ‘Which one is that?’ And we’re both usually fine.”
The couple are coming up to their 10th wedding anniversary. Do they have plans?
“Let’s say we do,” he laughs, making a mental note. “We’ve done Africa. We’ve done the Amazon. We’ve had the good fortune of being able to travel the world and see many great places and we look forward to being able to do that with Ruby too.
“At the same time we live in such a great part of the world here in Sydney. You can step outside your door and go to the Bogey Hole here, and on the right day see a wealth of sea creatures crawling in and out of the rocks pools.”
He loves the Bronte to Coogee walk and snorkelling in Gordon’s Bay.
“I saw a juvenile green sea turtle once, which I found out was released from Taronga Zoo after I posted it on Instagram.
“His name is Andrew and it was a beautiful experience. I always take an underwater camera so I took some shots and video and then I said to myself, ‘put the camera away and appreciate the fact you are swimming with a sea turtle’ so I did that for about two minutes before I got tangled in a blue bottle. And that was my day done!”
There was never any question 2024 was the postcode the couple wanted to settle into. Both grew up in WA but Tasma had been a Bronte local since she left home, and had her heart set on the beach suburb.
“We had a day we were walking along the shore here in Bronte, standing overlooking the sea baths and the cliffs, and I turned to Tasma and said, ‘We’ll get a place here, I promise you we’ll get a place here.’
“I had no way of guaranteeing that would happen -— maybe it would be when we were 65 or something — but it did ... it feels nice we’re able to put some roots down.”
They spent a year searching before buying their five-bedroom Bronte beach house in 2016 for $6.4 million, so their daughter will grow up a Bronte girl.
“This is her home. She will have no recollection of living in LA and probably be very mad she will have no recollection of visiting Disneyland,” her dad says.
Asked what makes him jump out of bed each day, McManus says just being alive.
“I like the idea of waking up and going, ‘I’m healthy, I have a family, I love them, they love me. Oh and apparently I’m pretty awesome with my voices reading stories’.
“You look out at this beach with the sun twinkling off the waves and the stunning cliffs, and just think ultimately nothing much matters, however much everybody is spending on our houses and our clothes, tweeting and instagramming.
“If another asteroid comes and wipes us all out like the dinosaurs, this will all still be here ... They were all here long before we arrived and they will be here long after we’ve gone. That’s the kind of stuff I appreciate. That I have another day to get up and just go ‘Yeah this is a very fortunate life I have’.”
Show Me The Movie! airs Thursdays at 7.30pm on TEN
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