Helen Kapalos reveals what happened in ‘train wreck’ blooper
Presenter Helen Kapalos has revealed she had therapy to help her overcome a “train wreck” blooper while hosting Today Tonight that went viral. Here’s the behind the scenes story on what happened.
Entertainment
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Former television presenter Helen Kapalos has revealed she sought therapy to deal with an infamous blooper episode on Today Tonight.
“It was horrific,” Kapalos told the Herald Sun’s Sacked: Showbiz podcast. “I thought, ‘gosh, after all these years of working so hard at this craft, and being known as someone who’s professional and has high standards, it was a really unfortunate way to be remembered.
“I think, to this day, it’s still the most Googled item around me.”
Kapalos, a journalist and TV presenter, started her career on radio before taking jobs at Channel 9 (a reporter for National Nine News and A Current Affair), Channel 10 (co-presenter on 10 News First With Mal Walden), and Channel 7 (presenter on Today Tonight and senior correspondent on Sunday Night).
In 2013, during a tough night on live television, Kapalos fumbled her way through a bulletin on Today Tonight.
It was classic car crash TV, but also collision of silly circumstances; producers shouting in her earpiece, being unable to find a story, and having to pad out the show for seven excruciating minutes.
Kapalos had crossed to a media conference with then-Labor Party leader Bill Shorten, with estimates the event would take 14 minutes. It only went for eight.
“We got out of that, I back announced it, and I thought, I’ll talk through it,” Kapalos said. “The interview was great, we did some good work, and apparently (Channel 7 owner) Kerry Stokes was watching. I thought, This is great. I thought things were going really well.
“After that cross ended abruptly, (producers) didn’t know where to go. They were saying, ‘Go to story 81!’ They kept talking about a number, 81. I was flicking through my sheets, couldn’t see it, couldn’t see the story. I think someone had made a mistake. We had a fairly new person in the control room as well.
Kapalos pushed on. “I started to read another story, and they started screaming, No, no, no, we want this story!’
“Then it got really awkward. It was really hard because people were just screaming. I’ve had lots of screaming in my ear over the years, and lots of really tense situations, but you generally know how to talk out of them. I always now how to fill a 30 second hole, but a seven minute one is difficult when you’re being told you have to absolutely go to that story.
“So tried to find the story, and I think they’d made a mistake, then I started to read another story, and they were screaming again. I tried to throw to an ad break, and that wouldn’t happen.
“It was just horrific,” Kapalos said, exasperated. “It was the biggest train wreck. I literally had to have therapy after it.”
Kapalos said therapy helped her with “detaching … from that particular identity, adding: “I knew I wasn’t just that person. I learned to demystify … the shame and the trauma. To err is human.”
But Kapalos says the self-critical voices in her head were strong and, for a time, forced her into hiding.
“The outside voices are, ‘What do they think of me? Do they think I’m stupid? Do they think I’m a failure? Am I being defined by one mistake? How can I ever show my face in public again?
“I didn’t even want to be in the supermarket, or anything,” Kapalos said. “I was absolutely devastated … really crippled.
“It was the first time I can remember being close to a foetal position. I remember getting up one morning, just being in the corner of my room thinking, ‘I don’t know if I can get up again.
“It really took the wind out of my sails, but it also helped bring me back to Earth. It made me realise what was important, and (the blooper incident) was a first world problem, at the end of the day.
“It is what it is, and I don’t take it too seriously,” Kapalos says today. “Failing, stumbling; it’s a part of life and it builds resilience. Without it, you don’t get to grow, you don’t get to cultivate compassion and empathy for other people.”
Kapalos said the high profile world of news reading had its benefits, but it wasn’t real.
“You get everything thrown at you,” Kapalos said. “You get free tickets to everything, you’re on a reasonably good salary, and people treat you like you’re their long lost cousin. Everyone knows you, and everyone loves you.
“But it’s not real, and it’s not grounding,” she added.
“In a lot of ways, I was happy to be shaken out of that. And I was happy I’d acquired a platform to tell my story. I vowed to use it really wisely.”
Kapalos wrote, directed and executive produced the doco, A Life Of Its Own, based on a series of stories about medical marijuana she did for Sunday Night.
Kapalos also served as Chair of the Victorian Multicultural Commission for four years
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