Ricki-Lee: ‘Stop asking me when I’m having kids’
Singer and Australia’s Got Talent host Ricki-Lee Coulter speaks frankly about body image, being robbed of the Australian Idol win 15 years ago and why she has chosen to be childfree.
Stellar
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After her shock elimination from Australian Idol in 2004, Ricki-Lee Coulter couldn’t go anywhere without hearing three words, chanted to her face, loudly and often: “You were robbed!”
The singer placed seventh in the series, despite being slated as the favourite to win and, at the time, judges Marcia Hines, Ian “Dicko” Dickson and Mark Holden put the lack of votes for Coulter down to viewer complacency.
The pop singer still hears the phrase, like a broken record, even today. Stellar witnessed it firsthand earlier this year, when she performed at Melbourne’s The Palms at Crown in May.
“They feel compelled to tell me that,” Coulter says now. “It’s pretty amazing. I still get people yelling ‘You were robbed!’ at me pretty much every day. I don’t think I have ever cared about anyone on television that much.”
This year marks Coulter’s 15th in the entertainment industry — a milestone for any Australian pop performer, especially one who launched on a reality show.
The 33-year-old has now been around long enough to be considered a survivor, and credits the public’s impassioned reaction to her Idol exit for the longevity.
“I feel like not winning Idol has guilt tripped Australia into supporting me for the last 15 years,” she tells Stellar. “They feel like they let me down, so they have to make up for it.”
Coulter is only half serious, of course; she’s well aware still being here also comes down to her determination and strength.
“Pop music is a tough business. You have to be a certain type of person to withstand everything that is flung at you. I’ve worked my arse off to get where I am. I never get complacent.”
Indeed, Coulter is considered one of Idol’s more successful graduates, having released four studio albums and 20 singles, including the platinum hit ‘Can’t Touch It’ (which was featured in the film Sex And The City 2), as well as working in radio and coming third on Dancing With The Stars in 2014. But her latest career move is unexpected.
The singer has signed on as host of Seven Network’s reboot of Australia’s Got Talent (AGT). With her history, many would expect her to be well-placed to sit on the judging panel, and Coulter agrees.
“I thought they were calling me to be a judge,” she reveals. “But they said the host is daggy, sassy, fierce, funny, down-to-earth, empathetic and compassionate, and said, ‘You’re all these things; no-one else can be the host except you. So please say yes.’”
While some might baulk at being called daggy, Coulter owns it — along with all the other attributes the network felt made her the right person for the gig.
“I’d never seen something more ‘me’ in my life. I’ve never thought about being a host before, but if the glove fits...” She trails off with a laugh.
It’s also a smart business decision for Coulter, who knows all too well the impact appearing on a high-profile reality television show has.
“It’s a great thing to be in people’s living rooms; it’s a reminder. You see people on the street and they ask where you’ve been — and you’ve just put a record out. But when you’re on the TV, you become top of mind for people.”
Coulter also figures that “this is a chance for people to see a different side of me, a dorky and crazy side, not just the fierce-girl-dancing-on-camera, pop-artist version”.
Revealing her true self is also why Coulter jumped at the chance to do a cover shoot — without the usual layers of make-up — for Stellar.
“People are so used to the Ricki-Lee face, lashes and big hair. If I have no make-up on, I can get about my day with no-one noticing. People say, ‘Wow, you look so different.’ Yeah, it’s amazing what a couple of hours of hair and make-up can do for a girl!”
She’s no stranger to the opinion of strangers, especially in an era where you can message celebrities direct to their own phones, bypassing the days of fan mail opened by third parties.
“It might sound rude, but what people think of me doesn’t bother me. If I see a nasty comment, I scroll past it or delete it. Not that I get a lot, but some men are just gross and say sleazy things.”
On social media, Coulter is less interested in presenting a perfectly curated image and more focused on inspiring and motivating her followers. But she tells Stellar it doesn’t always have the desired effect.
“I get people asking me if I’m OK, which is really nice but often the posts aren’t for me. Someone rang the other day asking if Rich and I were getting divorced because I’d posted about toxic people. No way! Stop reading into everything so much.”
“Rich” is Richard Harrison, her husband of almost four years and now also her manager. They met in 2009 through a mutual friend who “pulled up his Facebook and was going through his friends [list]. I saw Rich and went, ‘Oh. My. God. Who is that?’”
Two months later, Coulter was at Melbourne’s Esplanade Hotel after an AFL match with that same friend.
“It was midnight, we’d been drinking. The classy girl I am, I was standing on a chair sculling a jug of beer and in comes that face I’d seen on Facebook. It was like a bullet to my chest. He smiled at me and it was like my knees went from under me. We clicked straightaway.”
Coulter, whose first marriage ended in divorce in 2008 (and fuelled several songs), married Harrison in France in 2015.
When they met, he was running a personal training studio in Melbourne. He soon followed her to Sydney and started to ask questions about her management.
“He could see things from an outsider’s perspective that I couldn’t. I was trapped in it. He lifted the cover for me.”
Coulter tells Stellar that Harrison’s progression to taking over as her manager was a natural one. Despite having no experience, and perhaps due to that very fact, she felt he was offering sound career advice. Pretty soon he was also getting great results.
“He got me signed and writing with all my dream songwriters. All the things that should have been done at the start of my career.”
The pair now live on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, and have learnt to set boundaries between their personal and professional lives.
“His mind is always ticking over. He used to wake me up at 3am by tapping me on the shoulder and going, ‘Hey, you know that thing we’re doing next week, what if we...’ and I’d be like, ‘What?!’ If you’re waking me up for sex, that’d be one thing, but you’re waking me up to talk about work! So we had to set that boundary.”
Another line that Coulter is determined to draw in the sand surrounds the ongoing focus on her decision not to have children.
The subject has followed Coulter, much to her annoyance, since she was blindsided by what she says was an “insensitive” question during a radio interview in 2014.
“It’s a completely personal decision,” she tells Stellar. “You can’t tell people how to live their lives. You don’t know what people are going through, if they can’t have kids, or are trying, or have lost a baby.”
Keen to set the record straight and put an end to the public discourse, Coulter explains: “For me, it’s simply: I don’t want kids. People on the street ask me, ‘When are you and Rich having kids?’ Stop!”
Besides, the singer is constantly — and happily — surrounded by them, anyway. Her sister Emily is nine years old, and Coulter is also an aunt.
“My mum and my sister had babies around the same time. I love being an aunty. We’ll stay up all night eating pizza, we’ll wake up and have a tub of ice-cream for breakfast and send you back to your parents — bye.”
The other narrative that has followed Coulter, and at times overshadowed her music, has been her body. When Harrison and Coulter stated dating and she lost weight, stories ran that Harrison was her trainer.
“He trained me once,” she clarifies. “And that was the last time. It was a case of, ‘That’s not happening.’”
Coulter can trace back to the moment she somehow became the mascot for curvy girls. “When I was 18 and did Idol, I was becoming a woman in front of everyone. So you get asked a lot about body image.
“I grew up in a family of beautiful, curvy, fierce women. When people asked me about my body, and I was curvier than other singers, I guess that narrative was written for me. I was never going to talk badly about myself. I’m still not a size six; I’m definitely not skin and bone.”
While gossip magazines and websites have frequently run weight-related headlines throughout her career, Coulter says any weight gain or loss has been a result of personal circumstance.
“Just the other day, there was a story: ‘Singer Ricki-Lee shows off her pert derriere after 30kg weight loss.’ The fact that’s still part of a headline after 10 years astounds me.
“I put on a bit of weight because I was upset and getting divorced. I was emotionally eating. I was living a very unhealthy life, drinking a lot, eating rubbish. Everything was out of whack.
“Then I lost the weight. And I didn’t lose weight for Rich — it was my own decision. The balance shifted because I was happy and met someone who was a great person and my life changed because of that.”
By now she is resigned to the scrutiny, but she is also determined to shrug it off.
“I get it,” she says. “For whatever reason, people are interested in my weight and my body. I live a healthy lifestyle, but I’m balanced as well. I gain a few kilos, I come back and work hard because I know I have to get back into that little sequinned dress for my next show.”
And a few of them are ahead — as well as her AGT commitments, Coulter has tour dates set up through the rest of the year.
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At those shows, she will play songs from her career and Idol days, as well as a whole set dedicated to the A Star Is Born soundtrack. She is also working on a new single.
When Stellar asks what fans can expect from the shows, Coulter is less particular than philosophical with her answer.
“There’s things I wish I hadn’t done, but I don’t regret a thing. I got some good songs out of the bad times. The hardest thing now is I’m very happy, I don’t know what to write about! No-one wants to hear you sing about how happy you are.”
Australia’s Got Talent premieres 7pm, Sunday July 28, on the Seven Network. Ricki-Lee Coulter’s Australian tour starts on September 28; visit ricki-lee.com.
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