Lauren Phillips on her engagement, radio empire and THAT Jackie O rivalry: ‘There’s no bad blood between us’
After a dramatic run which included losing her high-profile radio job – then securing a new one – Lauren Phillips reflects on her very public rivals, and her road to ratings success.
Stellar
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When Lauren Phillips saw Jackie “O” Henderson from across the room at an Australian Open event in January, she could feel all eyes on her.
Just two months prior, her hit breakfast radio show had been axed to make room for Henderson and Kyle Sandilands’ Sydney-based radio show to expand into Melbourne. Now, the chance for a potentially awkward (and highly public) run-in was high.
While others might have cringed in anticipation of a confrontation, Phillips is no shrinking violet. She also wasn’t going to let her own disappointment prevent her from being a good sport.
“That’s not the way I was raised,” she tells Stellar, adding that she bounded over to Henderson for a friendly chat, pushing the proverbial elephant out of the room. “I could see everyone in the club going, ‘Oh my gosh, they’re both here,’” she adds of the perceived tension.
“I don’t know what people were expecting, but I went and said hello. I said, ‘Congratulations on the job. You’re really lucky to have a Melbourne audience, because there are great people in Melbourne, and good luck.’”
Although she says she doesn’t know Henderson well, Phillips adds that she’s always found her to be “really lovely. I’ve said hello in passing [before], and there’s no bad blood between us. I’ve found the radio wars conversation really interesting. Obviously, we’re all in competition. But I’ve had so much support from the industry.”
Listen to the latest episode of the Stellar podcast, Something To Talk About, below:
Support has also come from listeners. Last November, Phillips and her KIIS FM co-hosts Jase Hawkins and Clint Stanaway were given the option to hang up their mics after being given their marching orders by ARN, the parent company of their show, which had been on the air since 2021.
But instead the trio decided to finish their run by discussing their hurt and fears for the future between their show’s usual jokey banter.
As a result, “our whole audience came along for the ride with us, which made for interesting times when you’re standing at Woolworths or Coles, trying to buy your dinner, and you’re talking to a stranger about losing your job,” Phillips recalls, her eyes brimming with tears.
“But it was so heartwarming, and people were so kind and overwhelmingly generous with their time and support towards us. It actually turned out, in a really dark cloud, there was this beautiful support and generosity from people that extended beyond our family and friends.”
At no stage during the radio show shake-up or since, the 37-year-old explains, has she felt any ill will towards Henderson and Sandilands.
“It was hard for us, but it’s also uncomfortable when you take someone else’s job,” Phillips reasons.
“I’m sure they didn’t feel ecstatic about it. It’s just that it was their dream to have a national show and slowly they’re getting there.”
In her lowest moments, Phillips was also bolstered by the encouraging words from a supportive sisterhood of Melbourne-based media giants.
“Fifi Box reached out to me straight away, and Carrie Bickmore and Kate Langbroek – all of these women who I’ve looked up to,” she says. “I’ve only done this for a couple of years, and these are women who have done this for a really long time. To even have my name in the same sentence as them has been hugely humbling.”
Now Phillips’ name carries its own weight. Five months after she, Hawkins and Stanaway launched their new Nova 100 show Jase & Lauren on March 8, it rose to number-one in Melbourne’s highly competitive FM breakfast slot.
(As of October 1, it sits a close second to Fox FM’s Fifi, Fev & Nick, with The Kyle & Jackie O Show far behind the pack.)
“Who knows why radio shows are different in each city,” Phillips says with a shrug. “Contrary to what probably some people think or might say, those results bring a feeling of gratitude for us, because we’ve come from a place of losing our jobs to a place where we feel really supported.”
A big part of that support comes from Phillips’ parents, Liz Coningsby and Bobby Phillips, whom she credits with backing her no matter her childhood ambitions and giving her confidence to believe she could do anything in adulthood.
She recalls growing up in Melbourne wanting to be a lawyer because “I was good at arguing but I wasn’t smart enough, [then] I wanted to do dancing, so I did dancing, and I was terrible at it – still am,” she adds with a laugh.
“I wanted to do music lessons and be a singer and I was terrible at that, too … I’m still not really sure what I’m good at besides talking. So I guess I’ve found my place in the world.”
While she may have first caught the public’s attention in the early 2000s as the partner of now-retired AFL star Gary Ablett Jr, Phillips used her gift of the gab to build a successful media career, one that began as a Nine Network presenter on the Victorian edition of Postcards in 2008.
That means she feels as at-home in the throng of footy spectators at the Melbourne Cricket Ground as she does rubbing shoulders with glamorous punters at Flemington Racecourse. “I’ve grown up going to the races,” she tells Stellar.
“As soon as I was 18, I couldn’t wait to go to the Melbourne Cup with my friends.”
That’s why Phillips and her fiance, businessman Paul O’Brien, were excited to share the experience of the luxe Birdcage Enclosure at last year’s Cup Carnival with their visiting pals, Matt Damon and his wife, Luciana Barroso.
“Matty loves his horses and his racing, and so does Paul, so the two of them are like two peas in a pod,” she adds of the men, who huddled over their form guides on Derby Day.
Phillips became friendly with the Oscar-winning star through O’Brien, who is the owner of a charter jet business with clients that include Damon and Barroso, and Chris Hemsworth and his wife, Elsa Pataky. (The couples are so tight-knit, they were all on holiday in Mykonos together in June last year when O’Brien proposed to Phillips.)
“Like anyone with friends from overseas, you have an enormous amount of pride in where you come from, and I think Melbourne is one of the greatest cities in the world,” she says of her hometown.
“Regardless of if it was Matty and Luce or any of our friends from overseas, we get a great deal of pride in showing off where we live and how we go about our day to our friends. So, it was really nice to have them here.”
With the 2024 Cup Carnival just around the corner, the Victoria Racing Club member says she’s hoping to attend Melbourne Cup Day on November 5 after missing it in recent years. “We’ve skipped Melbourne Cup Day the last few years because I have to work on Wednesday morning, so we’ve had barbecues at home, which I also love,” she adds.
“We’re definitely going to Derby Day. And Clint, Jase and I are going together as a team to Oaks Day, which is as close to the weekend as we can get because we only have one show left. But normally, our Friday morning after Oaks Day is like, ‘Look what the cat dragged in.’”
Phillips has scaled back her media commitments due to the ungodly hours of breakfast radio, which has her setting an alarm for 4am so she can be on-air at 6am, but she recently found a window in her schedule to fly to Canada to shoot a travel show.
Life, she says, involves “getting up early, working hard, spending time with my family and friends and switching off where I can, because if you don’t have the opportunity to switch off, our jobs can be kind of overwhelming.”
There are some non-negotiables on her social calendar: footy, spring racing, the Australian Open, Fashion Week and the Grand Prix.
Though, despite being a fixture at these major events, she concedes, “It’s very rare that I’m out of the house after about 8.30pm these days. But when I am out, I like to have a good time – and then it takes me about three weeks to recover.”
Among those who can lure Phillips out of self-imposed hibernation is a group of glamorous friends that includes model and entrepreneur Rebecca Judd and fashion designer and businesswoman Nadia Bartel. Revealing that she’s the first to volunteer to take the photos rather than be in them, Phillips continues, “I’m so far from glamorous compared to those girls.” Even so, the group’s bond is called into question.
“Some people think it’s a surface-level friendship,’ she adds, “but Bec and I have been friends for the best part of 20 years. A lot of girls in that group have been friends for a really long time, and we’ve sort of grown up in the media and gone through trials and tribulations together.”
Mindful of the intense interest in her social life, Phillips makes a conscious effort not to share too much about her more famous friends on the radio.
“We all talk about what’s happening in our lives and that is what’s happening in mine,” she explains. “They’re good sports. They’ve jumped on [to talk on-air] a couple of times.”
At first, Phillips found it tricky navigating the transition to radio from television – where she worked on wide-ranging programs, from the long-running children’s show Kids’ WB! to A Current Affair – but she has gradually found a balance between being authentic with her listeners and overshading.
“In TV, the cameras rolled and it was like, ‘OK, park anything personal that’s going on with your life and deliver what you’ve got to do, and when the camera stops rolling, you can be yourself again with whatever drama is going on in your life,’” she explains.
“Radio is the opposite. When I first started, I’d be like, ‘Oh, I’m in such a terrible mood because something happened last night.’ And Jase would say, ‘Great – let’s talk about it at 8am.’”
These days, the shared anecdotes are a measure of her learnt discretion. “There’s maybe been one or two times where Paul has looked at me when I’ve walked in the door after the show and said, ‘Did you really need to tell everybody I said or did that?’” she says of her very private fiance.
“So I suppose marrying someone with such a public job and who talks about things so openly is a bit of a shock to his system. But he’s such a good sport about all of it.” Though Phillips says they’re in no rush to say “I do”.
“We’re pretty happy with our lives right now, and when we get a minute to breathe – this year’s been a rollercoaster, it’s been insane – we’ll sit down and talk about it,” she says of wedding planning with O’Brien.
“Either that or it might be a case of, ‘We’re both free for a week next month, let’s go.’”
Lauren Phillips will attend this year’s Melbourne Cup Carnival at Flemington Racecourse. For more details or to purchase tickets, visit vrc.com.au. Tune in to Jase & Lauren from 6am weekdays on Melbourne’s Nova 100.
See the full shoot and interview with Lauren Phillips in Stellar. For more from Stellar and the podcast, Something To Talk About, click here.
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