Sharp Shooting: Launch for Real Housewives cancelled, Nine calls in top lawyer and Delta’s show cancelled
A Nine news veteran is said to be the latest to hire a top workplace lawyer to go after Nine news.
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A 20-year Nine news veteran is said to be the latest to hire a top workplace lawyer to go after Nine news over her dismissal from the company.
Former Nine producer Stephanie Angus left Nine in December 2023 after a decade at A Current Affair as a senior producer and back-to-back stints working on programs Mornings and Kerri-Anne.
Prior to that Angus worked on various sports programs including Nine’s The NRL Footy and The Cricket Show.
It’s understood Angus recently retained the services of John Laxon, the workplace lawyer who was successful in negotiating a payout for Nine’s Brisbane news director Amanada Paterson this month after she was sacked for failing to complete workplace training modules and other seemingly minor demeanours.
Angus’s complaint is said to relate to bullying by a senior news executive.
After leaving Nine Angus has freelanced and performed contract work for the ABC and Ten.
Her LinkedIn profile indicates she is “open to work”.
Angus could not be reached for comment.
Launch for Real Housewives cancelled
Months after an on-set altercation created headaches for producers of The Real Housewives of Sydney executives were forced to this week abandon hopes for a media launch party for fear simmering tensions may reignite.
In the absence of an official event, four members of the eight-person cast held a rebel viewing party at a Sydney drag bar on Tuesday night, the day the program had its season three premiere on streaming service BINGE.
Holding court and lapping up the attention from 200 fans at Sydney LGBTQI+ drag venue Universal Bar were original cast members Krissy Marsh and Nicole Gazal-O’Neil along with ex-model Caroline Gaultier and fashion/lifestyle consultant Victoria Montano.
Notably absent were ex Housewives Terry Biviano, vet Kate Adams, wellness spruiker Sally Obermeder and Martine Chippendale.
MORE: Real Housewives of Sydney’s secret stash
This exclusive event is said to have been organised by Marsh with assistance from ex-Housewife Victoria Rees and drag artist Tomi Grainger.
Spirits were high at the soiree and it wasn’t long before talk turned to the ugly allegations last year swept under the rug by production company Matchbox amid claims the company had failed to create a safe work environment.
With the program’s eight-woman cast still deeply divided over cast loyalties, earlier that day program producers had split the cast into non-warring factions to conduct media interviews.
Marsh and Montano were dispatched to Nine in North Sydney to skirt the subject of on-set rivalries with that program’s hosts, David Campbell and Sylvia Jeffreys.
Meanwhile, across the dial at Channel 7, Gazal-O’Neil, Adams, Obermeder and Chippendale found themselves dodging more of the same questions with The Morning Show’s Kylie Gillies and Larry Emdur.
To Gillie’s question, had there been an “altercation that stopped filming?”, Gazal-O’Neil offered an open-ended “I can neither deny nor confirm any of those rumours.”
Missing from the Real Housewives publicity roster however was onetime WAG and ex shoe designer Terry Biviano.
As we’ve reported previously, Biviano was absent when the cameras started rolling on the third season of Real Housewives last year.
Sources maintained this was due to a delay in Biviano signing her series contract. She would later deny this to sources.
When she eventually did arrive, she upset fellow Housewives including original stars Marsh and Gazal-O’Neil who are said to have only agreed to return for season three on the condition Biviano did not.
Matters finally came to a head in the ninth and second-last episode when one Housewife taunted another in front of 40 people at a staged party.
A staged photo shoot planned for episode 10 later was later cancelled after one Housewife left the country, or so we hear.
So what chance all eight women could be reunited last week for a civil publicity event?
None at all was the general consensus.
While at least one workplace complaint is understood to remain open and under investigation with production company Matchbox, the company this week failed to address new questions about the women’s ongoing dispute before publication.
Matchbox has previously said it is “committed to a respectful work environment”.
DELTA’S NRL CANCELLATION A MYSTERY
News this week that Delta Goodrem had cancelled plans to perform at the NRL Las Vegas season opener due to the Los Angeles fires left bosses at NRL central scratching their heads during the week.
Las Vegas and Los Angeles are almost 500 miles apart after all and Goodrem was, well, in Australia as she had some time ago planned to be.
In fact, last weekend she was performing at an outdoor concert in the Victoria’s wine district in the Yarra Valley.
Within 48 hours however came word she’d pulled out of the NRL season opener in the US due to the “ongoing impact” of the LA fires.
Given the fires have been out for the past month the excuse raised more questions than answers - Goodrem’s next commitment appears to be three weeks down the track when she performs in Fiji on March 17.
Since selling her house in LA in 2017, Goodrem has maintained a low profile in the US. after having joined the Backstreet Boys on their DNA World Tour in North America.
Many were surprised this week to learn she may have reinvested in the US property market after previously struggling to sell her last LA home in the Hollywood Hills.
She eventually sold that property after almost a year on the market in about January 2017, with Goodrem realising only a modest profit on the five-bedroom home she’d bought in 2010 for $US4.3 million.
Located on the Cahuenga Mountain Pass, Goodrem downplayed talk of replacing her LA home and it remains unclear as to whether she subsequently purchased another property in LA or if she rents in the area.
In 2019, after a two-year search, she splashed out $4.8 million on a lavish apartment in Darlinghurst. It came after the 2014 sale of her apartment on Woolloomooloo’s Finger Wharf for $1.8 million.
In Goodrem’s social media post last month, since deleted, she said of LA that she and her fiancé Matthew Copley “had to temporarily evacuate but we are OK”.
“I love this beautiful city,” she added without clarification of her property status, “It has always been a home away from home for me.”
Replacing on the bill in Las Vegas are LA-based Australians the Stafford Brothers, Conrad Sewell and New Zealand hip-hop star Savage.
TURF WAR
Finally, we hear there’s a turf war brewing at Nine where we understand staff are understandably miffed that Stan employees have free roam throughout Nine’s North Sydney building but Nine’s publishing and television staff unable to wander in the Stan’s restricted office space.
A legacy perhaps of former CEO and ex Stan boss Mike Sneesby who sought to preserve Stan’s primacy after the divisions merged under one roof?
Of course that doesn’t apply at Nine’s impoverished radio division which is still all the way across the harbour in Pyrmont where it finds all but forsaken in the master merger plan, waiting to be sold off.
Following this column’s report a week ago that former owner John Singleton was itching to buy back his former radio empire for about one tenth of the value he sold out for, came a raft of reports speculating on who Singo might employ should he be successful in picking up his old radio stations for a song.
It seems everyone fancies their chances of a career reboot under Singo even, perhaps, his on-again ex-girlfriend Kim Dennis, a former 2GB sales rep, who might have something to offer the enterprise.
Originally published as Sharp Shooting: Launch for Real Housewives cancelled, Nine calls in top lawyer and Delta’s show cancelled
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