Real Housewives of Melbourne star Lydia Schiavello flew to King Island for cheese but she is no airhead
SHE’S dined with Bill (Clinton), dated Mick (Jagger) and is besties with Shane (Warne). But behind Lydia Schiavello’s flirtatious facade is a woman who knows true heartbreak.
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TEARS well in her dark eyes when Lydia Schiavello speaks about Joseph. Though more than 25 years have passed since her tiny son was stillborn, it is clear his death continues to weigh heavily on the reality TV socialite.
The emotion catches the usually bubbly brunette off guard — forcing her to take a moment to catch her breath and compose herself.
“I’ve never really talked about it,” she admits, wiping away tears. “I’ve never felt like I could express myself about it. It’s hard. I feel him with me. I love children so much …”
It’s clear, Schiavello wants to change the subject.
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She is more comfortable flirtatiously asking the photographer to photoshop in some cheekbones for her; or regaling people with amusing anecdotes about dining with Bill Clinton, or being wooed by Mick Jagger, rather than discussing something as deeply personal as the loss of her child.
When Schiavello, 46, sits down with Weekend at her opulent Malvern townhouse she is every bit the stylish and flirty character who made such a divisive personality on Foxtel’s Real Housewives of Melbourne.
Dressed in an elegant Scanlan and Theodore skirt and top, her dark hair freshly blow-dried and a handcrafted diamond necklace around her neck, Schiavello is, on the surface, every bit the stereotypical uber-wealthy “housewife”.
She says she wouldn’t be caught dead in sportswear unless she was exercising, adding that women who wear their tracksuits all day are “just lazy”.
It’s hard to believe that behind the coquettish giggle and the glamorous facade is a tomboy who grew up in a pub dreaming of being an athletics champ.
Never judge a Housewife by her Prada handbag, it seems.
Schiavello was little more than 21 when she lost Joseph during labour. She was already a mother to a young daughter with her first husband, construction kingpin Peter Schiavello. The death of their baby boy came as a complete shock.
“I felt such guilt that I had somehow let my husband down — let my family down,” she says. “Two nuns came to visit me in the hospital and they told me that he died because his soul was not properly formed.
“They said if I was to have another child then his soul could return. That’s why I call my second son my boy with two souls. He’s the most beautiful person. I think that is why. He has two souls.”
It might seem hard to believe but Schiavello says starring in The Real Housewives of Melbourne — a show that arguably showcased the more frivolous and shallow side of her lifestyle and personality — has given her the confidence to finally talk about Joseph.
“I have always been someone’s wife, lover, mother, daughter,” she says. “I always came last in the queue. I finally get a chance to do something for me. And I’m loving it.”
Schiavello explains that Joseph is the reason she donated her entire pay cheque from Housewives to the Royal Children’s Hospital in the hope she can stop other parents from experiencing the pain of losing a child. The money, which clearly wasn’t small change, has been used to buy specialist equipment, orthotic supplies and incubators, she says proudly.
Schiavello says her desire to help sick children also inspired her to become involved in the Shane Warne Foundation, the charity spearheaded by the cricketing legend who is a very dear friend.
She laughs that most of the sick children she visits through the foundation have no idea who she is.
“But the nurses all do,” she adds, “and so do most of the parents.”
Schiavello admits she almost stood down from the Shane Warne Foundation last year because of the backlash over her small-screen persona.
Schiavello was widely pilloried on social media for being a vacuous bully for her small-screen feud with barrister Gina Liano and for admitting she had flown to King Island in her husband’s plane just to buy cheese, that she had forgotten how to clean and that she bought a new designer ski outfit every time she hit the slopes.
Matters weren’t helped when Schiavello seemingly rolled her eyes and made light of Liano’s cancer battle.
Schiavello blames the editing.
“Look the words did come out of my mouth,” she says. “But editing plays a big part in it. It really does. Anyone who can’t see that is stupid.”
Schiavello says the online abuse she and her co-stars received during the series was aggressive and distressing at times. However, she managed to shield her three adult children from most of the nastiness as she has kept them out of the spotlight and off the show.
And by mid-season Schiavello was able to “turn things around” for herself on social media, mocking herself on Twitter, too.
Her co-star, Andrea Moss, did not take the same approach and, finding the backlash all too difficult to handle, bowed out of doing series two.
“I couldn’t do that,” Schiavello says of Moss’s departure. “When I commit to something I see it through. We signed a contract to do this for three years so that is what I will do, unless they decide they don’t want me, of course.”
Though she admits that doing the show had put some strain on her two-year marriage to property developer Andrew Norbury.
“But the make-up sex was worth it,” she laughs.
Schiavello says Norbury found it difficult to deal with the sudden media scrutiny over their lives.
“He was embarrassed,” she says. “My husband is a very intelligent man. He didn’t like reading what was being said about me. He found it harder than I did.”
Schiavello and Norbury met through their children, who were classmates.
Natural opposites, the socially reticent Norbury eventually won over the vivacious Schiavello and the couple were married in Florence two years ago.
“She’s extremely kind and compassionate,” Norbury says of his wife. “Lydia has no awareness about her physical appearance. She’s careful about her grooming but she really has no concept of how beautiful she really is.
“She’s very social and I am not. We complement each other. If we had met 25 years ago it would have been a disaster but we are old enough now to appreciate it.”
The couple have just finished working on a project together — building and furnishing a new four-star hotel in Marysville. The lavish facility will be the venue for a spectacular 15th anniversary party for the Shane Warne Foundation later this year, featuring a menu by world-famous chef Heston Blumenthal and a star-studded guest list that includes Russell Crowe.
Schiavello says she enjoyed working with her husband but says she’s far too busy with her TV commitments to really devote herself to working as an interior designer just yet.
In winning Schiavello’s hand, Norbury has succeeded where even the world’s greatest Lothario, Mick Jagger, was forced to accept defeat.
Asked why she picked Norbury when she could have had one of the world’s most famous men, Schiavello says matter-of-factly, “I want to be the only woman, not the 5001st woman.”
Schiavello recounts that the aged rocker tried to romance her when she had just separated from her first husband. Schiavello says she had been with her construction tycoon ex since she was 16, so it was quite a shock to find herself not only single, but being pursued by Jagger.
“I was at a party and a friend comes up to me and says, ‘There’s someone who’d like to meet you.’ I said, ‘Well tell him he can come to me then.’
“So he went off and came back with Mick Jagger! He invited me to his concert but I told him, ‘I don’t queue for anyone, even you.’ He said he would soon fix that.”
After attending the concert, Schiavello went to a party at Jagger’s hotel. It was there that she first met and befriended Warne.
“You’ve heard that song ‘Got the moves like Jagger’? Well he was really using all the moves,” she says of the Rolling Stones frontman.
“I was doing some of my best ducking and weaving.” She said she inquired about the long row of suitcases in the room and they both ended up sitting on his floor going through them. Many were filled with books, prose and poetry which travels everywhere with him.
“He told me I looked like Bianca. I didn’t know who that was so I asked someone and they told me it was his ex-wife,” she says.
“Can you imagine? His ex-wife?”
She says Jagger invited her to London, offering to set her up in a flat. When she refused on the grounds that she had three small children and a dog, Jagger replied, “Bring the kinder”.
Amazingly, Schiavello manages to share such stories without sounding like she’s dropping names.
“People are just people,” she shrugs. “I don’t get starstruck.”
Likewise when she talks about Shane Warne it’s with the sort of warmth and honesty that someone would use to describe their brother.
“When I met Shane he had the tipped hair and the earrings. He was chubby and his face was strangely white from where he wore the zinc,” she says.
“We just got along really well. He’s humble and intelligent. I have known him for years. The only reason it’s highlighted now is because I’ve suddenly got a profile. Before then, no one cared that we were friends.”
Far from being unappreciative of her lifestyle, Schiavello says she sometimes marvels at how her life has turned out.
Her lavishly outfitted home in Malvern, with its marble benchtops, expensive artworks and Porsche in the driveway, is a far cry from the St Kilda Rd pub where she grew up.
The daughter of Italian immigrants, Schiavello and brother John spent a decade living over the Queens Arms Hotel with their parents, Tony and Lina, and their three cousins.
Though it seems hard to believe now, Schiavello says she was a tomboy growing up and would drive her father mad bouncing the basketball upstairs, causing plaster from the ceiling to cascade into the patrons’ beers.
She recalls ordering her meals from the pub kitchen, via the intercom, and peering from her bedroom as drunken punters brawled below.
Back then she dreamt of being an athletics champion. Or a secretary. Certainly not a reality TV star and glamorous socialite.
“Life does take some funny twists,” she says with a smile.
The Real Housewives of Melbourne season 2 premieres tomorrow at 8.30pm on Foxtel’s Arena
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LYDIA’S TOP 5
Coffee: short macchiato
Binge-watching: RHO ... anywhere
Hangover cure: Congee or bacon, eggs and hash browns
Tattoos: no, only scars
Fave beauty products: Cle de Peau beauty concealer; Clarisonic; Nivea body lotion and vitamin
POOCH PERFUME
Elizabeth Taylor had one. Kim Kardashian, J. Lo and Britney Spears, too.
So why not Figaro?
Not content with simply outfitting her pampered pooch in designer clothing (stored in a Louis Vuitton suitcase no less) Lydia Schiavello’s pet also has his very own fragrance.
Schiavello says the perfume was created especially for Figaro by an Arab sheik during one of her visits to Dubai.
“Dubai is known for its beautiful oils — it’s true, that is real knowledge there,” she says.
“A sheik made me some oil and I said to him, ‘That’s not really suitable for me, would you mind if I gave it to my dog?’
“He then offered to make one especially for Fig. It’s a very masculine scent with hints of bergamot.”
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