Samantha Armytage reveals why she doesn’t watch Sunrise anymore

Breakfast television star Samantha Armytage gets candid in her first indepth interview since leaving Sunrise last year, revealing which magazines she’d never appear on the cover of, her move to the country, and why she’d ‘never go back’ to morning TV.

After more than a year away from the hurly-burly of the city, Samantha Armytage has settled nicely into country living with her husband Richard Lavender. But that doesn’t mean the former Sunrise host isn’t keeping busy. As well as writing columns and interviewing newsmakers every week on her Stellar podcast Something To Talk About, she’ll soon be facilitating romance in an unexpected return to television. But getting out of bed before dawn to deliver the national news again? As Armytage says with certainty, “I’d never go back.”

There were certain things Samantha Armytage expected after falling in love with retired farmer Richard Lavender and marrying him at the end of 2020. She looked forward to waking up with him (and the sun) at their quiet, rural home in Bowral, a 90-minute drive southwest from the bustle of Sydney.

She wanted more days of walking across the paddock to collect firewood, seeing the care with which Lavender treated the land.

Yet in her return to simple country living, the former Sunrise presenter has come to realise she was carrying some surprising baggage, following a casual remark from Lavender.

“He was in the kitchen making coffee this morning,” a smiling Armytage tells Stellar.

“And he said, ‘You know, for quite a newly married couple, we seem to have accumulated a lot of Tupperware.’”

They also have a wardrobe overflowing with items designed to take Armytage down the red carpet or to the gym, and an ample collection of high heels she no longer needs nor wants.

“I’ve moved into his house [and] brought a whole lot of stuff with me,” Armytage admits. “But there’s been a pretty peaceful and nice sort of union.”

The best example of this, she says, is stepping into her role as a stepmother to Lavender’s two adult daughters.

Given that they’re too old to need any mothering from Armytage, she has instead bequeathed them her city-ready sandals and formal shoes, encouraged them in their careers, and offered to play matchmaker, should the need ever arise.

Perhaps that latter point inspired Seven West Media’s managing director and CEO James Warburton to call Armytage – for whom a return to TV was still very far from her mind – with a unique offer: a guest appearance on the latest edition of reality franchise Farmer Wants A Wife.

“He said to me, ‘This is sort of your life’,” she recalls. “And I guess it is.

“I mean, I didn’t see it that way. I didn’t move to the country to find love; it sort of happened organically because the man I fell in love with just happened to live in the country, thank God.

“I didn’t really want to be in the city, but I just didn’t know who I’d find in the country, and usually country boys get married quite young.”

Samantha Armytage is enjoying life in the country after leaving Sunrise in March 2021. Picture: Damian Bennett for Stellar.

Nonetheless, Armytage could relate to both the city suitors looking for an escape as well as the farmers – this year, a mix of men and women – seeking country-capable partners.

Becoming a form of mentor to them was indeed in her wheelhouse.

“After 22 years in news, doing a bit of fun, genuine, sweet reality TV is a really nice change for me, and it’s been really nice to be part of it,” she says.

Publicity-shy Lavender even agreed to appear on the show as part of Armytage’s back-story package.

“But he kept reminding me he’s not getting paid so he didn’t need to be in it too much,” she says with a laugh.

Before her marriage to Lavender, 62, Armytage, who turns 46 next Sunday, was notoriously tight-lipped about her love life.

Her mum once asked why she hadn’t told her she was dating Russell Crowe (she wasn’t), but Armytage never commented publicly on her partners, nor did she parade any previous boyfriends at public events or on social media. Until Lavender.

“I always felt that until I was married or really sure about someone, then I’m not going to talk about them publicly, and I’m really pleased I didn’t because boy, oh boy, there were a few who didn’t deserve to be spoken about,” Armytage explains, raising her eyebrows and breaking into a mischievous grin.

“Even with Rich, [fame] isn’t his world. He’s a very private person, so I feel like I give enough of him without having to share too much.”

Where she does enjoy a bit of sharing these days is on Something To Talk About with Samantha Armytage, her hit weekly Stellar podcast on which she conducts in-depth chats with actors, athletes, personalities, politicians and people who are making a difference, and gets to put her professional skills to use.

“A lot of people seemed to forget that there, in the middle, I’m a journalist,” she points out.

“It’s been nice to do long-form interviews because for so many years of my career, it was hammered into me that no-one has any time to consume news.”

She recalls the countless mornings that she became exasperated by time-chewing politicians giving her nothing new to offer Sunrise viewers, explaining, “But because of that commercial television brainwashing, you’d think that everything’s fine, that the grabs have got to be four seconds and the interviews are three minutes.”

However, as the podcast shows, “It turns out that people do have time when they’re walking the dog or on the train to listen to good-quality, informed interviews.”

Since the podcast launched in February 2021, Armytage has chatted to former breakfast rival Karl Stefanovic (“perhaps the only person who has had as much bulls**t written about them as me”), Olympic diver Melissa Wu, activist Grace Tame, author Trent Dalton, former prime minister Scott Morrison, and her old mate Larry Emdur, who recently released his memoir Happy As.

Armytage scoffs at the idea that she could follow suit with her own tell-all, laughing archly that it would make for a salacious story because, she declares, “I know where all the bodies are buried.”

Samantha Armytage: ‘I’d never go back [to Sunrise]’ Picture: Damian Bennett for Stellar.

Emdur and his The Morning Show co-host Kylie Gillies, along with Sunrise weatherman Sam Mac, have stayed in touch since Armytage left Sunrise in March 2021 – a wake-up call, she says, that revealed who her true friends were.

“It was a really good stocktake to have in my mid-40s, actually,” she explains. “You know, if you only liked me for that job – and who only likes someone for what they do for a living? – then [I’m better off without you].

“It’s been really, really nice to be seen as just a person for a while.”

Moving back to the country has afforded Armytage the chance to reconnect with old friends and make new ones among Lavender’s horse racing fraternity.

“They’re really good people,” she says. “It’s really different to TV because they’re always genuinely happy to see someone else do well because they all know how hard it

is just to get a horse to the track without, God forbid, winning a race. So there’s this great camaraderie and history where everybody is really happy for you, which I haven’t really had before from my crowd.”

Somewhat ironically, the year she’s spent away from the screen, coupled with Lavender’s support, has put Armytage in a better head space to deal with the parts of the job that had been wearing her down.

Still, even though she keeps her apartment in Sydney as a base from which to operate, she’s in no hurry to face the full glare of the spotlight soon, apart from short-term gigs.

And that, she says, means the sun has fully set on Sunrise. “I’d never go back,” she reveals to Stellar. “You don’t go backwards in life. You’ve got to keep going forward.”

In fact, Armytage doesn’t even watch the show.

“When I do listen to radio and TV, no-one’s actually saying what they mean,” she explains.

“Everybody’s walking this tightrope because they fear they’ll say the wrong thing and the mob will descend on them, and that’s not journalism, and it’s not what I was paid to do back in the old days.”

What she understood to be her job as a journalist was analysing the newspapers and having a thought on the day to offer her viewers.

“I can’t tell you how many random people on the street come up to me and say, ‘Oh my God, I miss you so much. You used to say what I was thinking at home,’” Armytage shares.

“And, look, I don’t know if I’d be allowed to do that these days. I don’t know if I’d be brave enough. Actually, I probably would.”

These days, Armytage prefers to put the focus on her podcast guests or write her regular column for Stellar, and says she feels comfortable revealing more about her life in these pages.

“And it’s a good-quality magazine,” she offers. “I mean, you won’t see me on the cover of Woman’s Day by choice – and you can quote me on that.”

Overall, Armytage is very selective about what she shares outside her immediate circle.

“Most people who interview [others for a living] would say that,” she reflects. “It’s very hard being interviewed and, particularly for me, to decide what to share and what not to share because your life can become some sort of sideshow for people to mock you.”

Samantha Armytage admits there are some magazines she would never appear on the cover of by choice. Picture: Damian Bennett for Stellar.

But there was one person in her life who was quietly keeping tabs on every salacious headline and over-the-top story.

In 2020, a little over a year after she had begun dating Lavender, Armytage’s life entered a huge period of upheaval.

Her father, Mac, suffered a stroke in August and her mother, Libby, died that November after a long battle with an auto-immune disease.

Eventually, Armytage moved her dad from the family home into nearby Wagga Wagga in the NSW Riverina region, and joined her brother and Lavender in clearing out the homestead.

While sorting through the cupboards and old boxes, she made a discovery that she describes as like a stab in the heart.

“My mum had kept every magazine – even the ones that were horrible,” she says, laughing about the secret scrapbook of clippings on her career.

“There was a whole heap that went in the skip because they were just nasty. But she had kept it all.

And my family are no gushers. I mean, they’ll tell you when you’ve done a good job. But mostly Mum would say things like ‘Stop rolling your eyes so much on TV.’ She would never pump up your tyres much.

“So, I had a bit of a moment. Because I never knew [how proud she was].”

Lavender, on the other hand, had to undergo a crash course in tabloid culture after he was left both perplexed and alarmed to find paparazzi hiding among the wheelie bins on their property.

“It’s a weird phenomenon to have somebody, who you don’t know, taking pictures of you, without your permission,” Armytage says.

“And it’s done in this horrible, horrible way where they [take photos from unflattering angles] so they can run a story saying, ‘Samantha Armytage is flaunting her curves’, that then prompts anonymous trolls to get online and start saying, ‘Who cares about her?’ and things like that.”

So when people ask her why she would walk away from a glittering career, her only response is, “Why would I want to stay in it?”

OK, so maybe she’s always loved the thrill of live television, and it was nice to have someone on hand to pick out her ensemble for big events, she concedes.

But otherwise, she says, she doesn’t miss much about breakfast TV itself.

“I did Weekend Sunrise and Sunrise for 15 years straight, so I’ve missed a lot of mornings and weekends,” she says.

“It’s the little things that I love, like having a coffee in my own kitchen, or a shower in the morning – or even in the daylight – because having a shower in the dark is depressing.”

Samantha Armytage appears on the cover of this Sunday’s Stellar. Picture: Damian Bennett for Stellar.

The outlook is brighter now that she has more time to care for her father and look inward.

“It’s not about driving the best car or having masses of money or a big boat,” she says of what makes her feel fulfilled.

“I love being able to take the dog for a walk, see an actual sunrise or take the horses out. There’s always something going on here.”

Farmer Wants A Wife premieres at 7pm next Sunday on the Seven Network. Listen to Something To Talk About with Samantha Armytage wherever you get your podcasts.

Originally published as Samantha Armytage reveals why she doesn’t watch Sunrise anymore