Rove McManus on bringing a party vibe to his new live TV show and his surprising career as an author

With 16 Logies to his name, Rove McManus is an Australian TV institution. But even he knows he has his work cut out making a new live Saturday night show a success.

Multi-talented comedian, writer, producer, presenter, author Rove McManus is one of Australia’s most versatile and enduring talents, with 16 Logies to his name, including three Gold Logies.

After starting out in stand-up comedy, his various chat shows ran for ten years in Australia before he spent two years doing a talk show in Los Angeles.

Since returning to Australia he has done breakfast radio and hosted the Doctor Who fan show, Whovians for the ABC and quiz show Show Me the Movie for Channel 10, as well as becoming a father to daughter Ruby, with his actor wife, Tasma Walton.

He returned to the chat world with the one-off Saturday Night Rove last year as part of Channel 10’s Pilot week and is back for more this weekend.

Were you encouraged by the response to your one-off Pilot Week show last year?

I was. I have been going on about it for a while that it would be good to have something in this genre back again. And a lot of people I have met out and about or through social media seemed to be like-minded. So it was nice to feel that was validated with the overwhelmingly positive response to the pilot. Now it’s a case of rolling up our sleeves and seeing what we can do with something that isn’t just a one-off special and see if it can find a place in the current television landscape.

There has been a hole in the market for a show like this for a while — what have people been missing?

I think it’s the style of the show. I like to approach a show like this with comedy as its heartbeat and Saturday night is the perfect spot. It sounds a bit clichéd but it’s feel-good television and it doesn’t come with any unnecessary bells and whistles or tricks — it is what it is — and it’s comfort viewing for people as well. It’s also the ace up the sleeve of free-to-air television that we are live in a world of competition from streaming services and cable and online, if you can do it right it feels like it’s a nice communal program that everyone can enjoy together and at the same time.

Presenter Rove McManus planning to create a party vibe on Saturday Night Rove.

This is not your first rodeo by a long stretch — how have audiences and television changed since you were doing Rove Live a decade ago?

Finding a way of getting people’s attention is the big one — there are so many options for an audience now. But not only is the audience fractured, within each household the audience is fractured. You could have each individual member of the house watching their individual program on a laptop or a tablet or a phone. So how do you get everyone in a household together to watch something? We have a piece planned to go out and doorknock around a couple of suburbs to find out what people are doing, are they even home, what they are watching, would they be near Channel 10 and can I get you to watch? It’s like being on the political stump.

What can you tell me about the show itself?

There will be regular segments and the hope is that the general feel of the show is that Channel 10 have given us an empty studio on a Saturday night and instead of hosting a show, I’ll be hosting a party. So it’s me with a regular group of comedy friends — Alex Jay, Alex Lee and Justin Hamilton. Plus, Judith Lucy doing our voiceovers as she did for the pilot, which went down really well. Then we will have our main guest every week, a guest comedian, guest performer and they’ll all be threaded into the show. So being on a Saturday night it should have a great, hangout vibe to it.

You’re still very involved in stand-up comedy yourself — it that still your first love and something that keeps you on your toes?

It’s funny how when you first start doing stand-up it’s like ‘well, what else do I want to do in comedy?’. Now stand-up comedy is the trade I have to fall back on. No matter what else happens you can always get up in a room with a microphone and a swag full of jokes and entertain anybody. I love it and have been doing a bit more of that in the last couple of years since I got back from the States. I have taken a bit of a break, but I am still writing jokes for what could be the next tour after this show. But it’s like anything, whether it’s television or comedy, there is something about being in that live environment that is just quite electric. So if there’s a way we can wall that in with some television cameras for Saturday night, then we will have done our job.

Rove McManus doesn’t think his old mate Tom Gleeson’s Gold Logie win was controversial.

You were really the last guy to dominate the Logies — what did you make of Tom Gleeson winning this year and the controversy that came with the campaign he ran?

I’m not sure how controversial it was. I was on a plane on the way to Perth for the school holidays so I didn’t get to see it. But there are always going to be two camps of where the campaign was for Tom. But you can’t discount the fact that he’s had a couple of big years and as someone who has known Tom for a long time in the business, to see where he is now from where he started out as a stand-up like the rest of us, if he was ever going to win it, this would have been his year anyway.

You have also added a few more strings to your bow — author and illustrator — what books do you have coming up?

There is a kids’ picture book called Disgusting McGrossface which is a big, bright, shiny book with all the fart jokes you could wish for. And then there are another six to seven plus readers series called Rocky Lobstar, which is about a performing lobster boy in a sideshow carnival and his friends. This would be the first of three books planned for that, and that will be out in October.

What inspired you to do that?

Having a little five-year-old you are reading stories every night and the play I have with my daughter is that imaginative play. Unfortunately, my poor wife Tasma has been chastised by Ruby our daughter when she reads the books and says ‘no I want daddy to read it because he does the voices better. So it’s sort of part performance. Then I thought we should be putting that into our own life.

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Tasma Walton and Rove McManus at last year’s AACTA Awards Presented by Foxtel in Sydney. Picture: Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images for AFI

Sounds like you are busier than ever — have you figured out your ideal work/life balance?

I think so. I have a pretty hard out at the end of a work day to get home and be dad. Putting this show together is the first time I have been full-time on anything with my daughter so you can’t be as selfish with your time. It’s not just like calling your partner to say ‘I’m going to be home late, I might skip dinner’, it’s a lot more impacting than that now. So I still drop her to school on the way to work and make sure I am around and present as much as I can be. But at the same time I have had a pretty good window of time through her early development that I have been able to be around despite still having work on. So now that I am a bit more full time I feel OK if I am not around every day. She’s at kindy now and is a busy little social butterfly anyway — she’s having busier Saturdays than I ever will.

WATCH: Saturday Night Rove premieres Saturday, 7.30pm on 10 and 10 play.