But here, in the most unlikely of places, beneath the mirrorball on the dancefloor, Susie O’Neill is quietly coming undone.

She’s gripped by a fear she’s never known, one that leaves her exposed, with every emotion laid bare. She’s never felt so vulnerable.

But the woman we’ve long known as Madame Butterfly swallows her pride, steps into the spotlight, and begins to dance.

With each step, she tries to let go of everything holding her back.

Of all the races she’s competed in as a three-time Olympian (1992, 1996, 2000), and the eight Olympic medals she’s earned throughout her stellar swimming career, Dancing with the Stars has unveiled a part of herself even she barely knew existed.

“I’ve never cried so much, I’ve not slept that little or been as nervous since the Sydney Olympic Games,” says O’Neill, who retired from competitive swimming after the Sydney Games in 2000.

“I didn’t feel any emotion in swimming, that’s why I think I could do so many races and why I was so consistent, I really did not feel much.

“I never, or rarely, showed emotion or cried. I’ve never felt this many ups and downs at all. It’s probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

How she came to be on Channel 7’s popular dancing show, after previously turning it down, is part of a promise O’Neill made to herself when she turned 50 in 2023.

She vowed to embrace new experiences, push herself beyond her comforts, and say yes to the unfamiliar. That shift led her to, as she puts it, “quit everything”.

O’Neill stepped away from her longstanding radio gig as co-host on Nova’s Brisbane breakfast show last November.

She also stopped managing the admin for her husband Cliff Fairley’s ophthalmology practice, which she had done for 20 years, and eased back on parenting duties as their two adult children, Alix, 21, and Bill, 19, moved out of their family home in Brisbane’s western suburbs.

It was all to make way for a period of exploration.

As we chat at The Summit Restaurant, perched atop Mt Coot-Tha, O’Neill laughs easily, Brisbane’s skyline stretching wide behind her. There’s a playful glint in her eyes, but also flickers of nerves, aware the nation is about to see a different side of her when the show premieres on June 15.

It’s the first thing she’s done since she quit breakfast radio, a bold choice, she laughs, for someone who doesn’t love to dance.

“It was a weird thing to jump into straight after the radio because I was completely burned out but I think I was worried about being still,” she says.

“I quit everything and the first thing I got offered, I said ‘yes I’ll do it’ because I like to 
be busy.

“I want to be still … but there’s some part of me that needs a bit of an adrenaline rush.”

O’Neill agreed to join the show on a whim, just before Christmas last year. Then reality hit.

“When I got to Sydney (for filming) and I realised ‘Oh they’re going to film us with a live audience and it’s going to be on TV’, I was like what have I done?

“I felt the normal things like I was going to look silly … I’m going to look like an idiot, I’m going to look stupid, I’m going to look nervous, I’m going to look petrified.”

She laughs. “I was going, ‘Why did I quit my radio job?’”

Filming wrapped earlier this year giving O’Neill time to reflect. She laughs about being a fish out of water, pun intended, and happily calls herself the “worst in the group”.

She jokes about taking a full week to learn six steps, and only now, weeks later, being about to remember them. It was, she says, humbling to be a beginner again and sit in the discomfort of not being the best.

“If I knew what was involved I probably wouldn’t have done it but I’m really glad that I did it … it was kind of traumatic, but I’m also really proud that I pushed myself.

“Because I wasn’t good at it, it was really difficult, I was the worst in the whole group probably, so that was really difficult.

“That was like all the people picked last in sporting competitions … so you have to be happy with what you’ve done and the training you’ve done and not the place or the feedback you’re getting from the judges because that’s not positive,” she says with a laugh.

It was physically gruelling, with O’Neill injuring her foot with a stress reaction that left her barely able to walk in the lead-up to the competition. She’s no stranger though to pushing through pain, but she was unprepared for how out of her element she would feel.

“I don’t even dance when I go out, I’m not a dancer,” she laughs.

“I prefer just standing and watching people dance actually with the music up loud so I don’t have to talk to people too much.”

There are several moments like these throughout our conversation, brief flashes of the quieter, more introspective side of her.

She’s grown up in the public eye, generously letting us into her life with warmth and sincerity, but always at a careful arm’s length.

The balance has helped preserve her privacy but, she admits, has made it harder to be vulnerable.

Yet, of all places, it was on the dancefloor where she began to soften.

“I am someone who always likes to feel like I’m under control and in charge and nothing concerns me, but all these emotions kept coming up,” says O’Neill, who was partnered with Lyu Masuda, whose previous stars included Deni Hines, Nadia Bartel and Emily Weir (who came runner-up in 2023).

“They kept saying that dance brings all the emotions out of you and they did, and they all kept bubbling to the surface.

“I tried to block them but then Lyu would say ‘Let them out, you’ve got to let them out’.”

“There was this thing we would do when I was getting really frustrated or when I looked like I was going to explode, Lyu would go, ‘One, two, three’, and we would both scream.

“All this other stuff would come up, stuff about things in your life and you start crying about.” It’s a rare moment of vulnerability from O’Neill who admits she holds on to emotions for years before allowing herself to fully process them.

She shares an example of a swimming race in which she didn’t meet expectations and couldn’t bring herself to watch for nearly two decades.

“It’s easy for me to hold on to things, so dancing started to be that volcano feeling again for other parts of my life that I’ve also been holding on to,” she says.

She speaks with surprising honesty: “It’s being really judgmental of myself, not feeling good enough, the same stuff everyone has I presume … and self-doubt of everything you’ve done.”

O’Neill never expected learning to dance would help her open up, and now wonders if it might have sparked something deeper.

“I wonder if it’s changed me in real life?” she muses. “I’m trying to be more open and I’m trying to talk about my feelings more and explain to people around me what I’m feeling, I’m still working on that.

“I’ve never really been like that. I’m more like ‘I’m feeling fine, everything is fine, it’s all good’, but I am trying to communicate better to the people around me but it’s hard.

“It’s hard isn’t it because you do feel vulnerable and I still feel ‘weak’ when I say, you know, ‘I’m feeling this’ or ‘I’m not feeling good’ but I think that was good to get the ball rolling and I need to lean into that a bit more.”

That’s exactly what she hopes to do during what she’s calling her “gap year” – a period of not just trying new things, but truly feeling and embracing whatever comes.

“Generally my brain thinks too much and I am overthinking, I can spiral into negativity quite quickly but I’m hoping this is a different time because I’m better at setting up structure and taking time out for myself which I’ve never done before, and doing things that I know I need to do.”

Perspective has also come with age, she says, and knowing exactly what she wants.

“It’s the fact you’re closer to the end point than the start point and … that feeling that quickly life is running out and I feel like I’ve got to fit so much more into it.”

It’s what led her to walk away from breakfast radio after being with the program in some capacity for a decade.

“For me, by the end, I was getting really tired and cranky and I wasn’t liking myself doing it,” she says of her radio days.

“I suppose it was like the end of my swimming career when it was hard to put in 100 per cent into every training session.

“I didn’t wake up in the morning excited to go to training about my swimming and it started to feel very similar to that at the end of the radio, I wasn’t really excited about going in and energised so you feel like you’re not doing as good a job as you could do and probably it’s only going to get worse.

“I felt like it was time to go for me.”

O’Neill’s passion remains strong for radio, and she’s still contracted to Nova which gives her the flexibility to take on “bits and bobs” – including casual radio gigs like her recent two- week stint co-hosting Nova’s holiday breakfast program alongside Mel Tracina and Matty Baseley.

“It’s been great to have energy back and not have to get up early and think of things to talk about and I don’t have to be really happy if I don’t want to be happy and get on with other things,” she says.

It’s a new chapter for O’Neill. With herchildren now out of the house and more space in her life, it’s opened the door to new opportunities, including her recent appointment to the Australian Olympic Committee’s executive board and reconnecting her with the sporting world.

“A big part of my life was doing the kids’ stuff like all the school things, that to me was something that has changed my mindset as well, not having to be responsible for two people so much,” she says. “You know that feeling that you’re always thinking more about other people than yourself. With that gone I feel like I have all this spare time in my brain.”

The quiet has taken some getting used to but, O’Neill says, it has been surprisingly comforting for her and Cliff, 54.

“It’s just made more room for us and more time for us to do our things,” she says, with both children studying finance at university.

“Cliff is still busy in his job but we are getting to that point where we can have some more down time together and it’s just us together and not doing family things or ferrying people around or what we used to do for so many years, but what we used to do pre-kids,” she says.

She rattles off the to-do list: more surfing, bike riding and four-wheel driving.

It’s been a smooth transition to empty nesters, says O’Neill, made easier knowing her kids are happy, and thriving in their new-found independence. “We do miss them obviously and the conversation at the dinner table isn’t always as interesting as it used to be with more people at it but we’re happy that they’re going well with what they’re doing and being their own people.”

Her relationship with her kids has grown stronger, she says, since they moved out and she treasures their moments together even more – especially recently when both kids joined the live audience watching their mum dance.

“My daughter cried the whole time through my dance,” O’Neill says.

“It was worth doing just for that.

“When I finished, she’d bought some flowers for me and she’s like, ‘Oh my god, I’m so proud of you, Mum, I can’t believe you’ve done that.’”

“They’ve both been so supportive and it’s really meant a lot to me.”

The bond she has now with her kids, in many ways, is a quiet triumph – and a reflection of how far she’s come. It’s a moment that once felt unimaginable, during one of the more difficult chapters of O’Neill’s life when she was grappling with postnatal depression after the birth of Bill.

“I know I said earlier that dancing was the hardest thing I’ve ever done but no, being a mother and a parent is the hardest thing,” she says. “Mothering and having babies and getting through that was really, really difficult for me and I’m really proud of how they’ve turned out and how they are going.

“Looking back, you would think so differently, wouldn’t you.

“I would’ve exercised a lot more, asked for help earlier, so much guilt I found around motherhood and taking time out for
yourself but when I finally got that it was OK to do that, then I was a lot better mother that’s for sure.”

Now, as O’Neill enters a new era, she’s embracing the imperfect and unfamiliar.

She’s letting go of the routines and schedules that once dictated her days, making way for unexpected adventures. The kind that led her to dancing in high heels and sequins on national television. But it’s never really been about learning how to tango. It’s about a modern-day Madame Butterfly unfurling her wings and taking flight once more. ■

Dancing with the Stars premieres on June 15 from 7pm on Seven and 7plus