Sunrise co-host Natalie Barr on ‘playing bridesmaid’ to Sam Armytage
Sunrise co-host Natalie Barr reveals how she really felt ‘playing bridesmaid’ to Samantha Armytage for years before stepping into her shoes, and opens up about the tearful reunion with her mother after 15 months apart.
Stellar
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If ever there was a time Natalie Barr was happy to see her mum Julie, this was it. After being kept apart for 15 months by COVID border closures, Barr was finally going to be able to hug her Western Australia-based mother.
And while the Sydney reunion was originally planned to mark Barr’s 53rd birthday, it just so happened to also coincide with Barr’s first week on air after replacing Samantha Armytage as co-host of Seven Network breakfast show Sunrise.
“It’s very special,” Barr tells Stellar, pausing to contain her tears.
“Mum booked to come over here because it was my birthday and then all this happened. I can’t believe she’s been here for it. I feel very lucky. The older you get you believe in these things – you believe in karma; you believe that somewhere in the universe, it’s all meant to be.”
Adds Julie, “It’s very special to be here, full stop. I’m very, very proud of Natalie and what she’s achieved. But I had no idea what a whirlwind week it would be when I got off that plane from Perth.”
Stellar caught up with the mother and daughter in the midst of that pivotal week, and their immense joy at seeing each other was tangible. COVID uprooted everyone’s life – whether you were reporting on it, like Barr, or switching on the news to hear about it.
“We’d planned to see Mum for Christmas, but it was literally three days before we were about to get on that plane that it was taken away from us. We are sitting there reporting it, but living it as well like all these other Aussies. I mean... so many stories were worse than ours, but it was still sad,” Barr says.
Pursuing a career in journalism has meant Barr – mum to Lachlan, 19, and Hunter, 15 – has lived away from her Bunbury home most of her adult life. However, whenever she’s needed her mum, she’s been there. And that included the sudden death of her father Jim, when Barr was six months pregnant.
“After I had the boys, it makes you realise what your mum does for you. I remember Mum came and stayed with me after I had Lachlan and Dad had just died,” the presenter recalls. “They were some of the hardest months of my life.”
Says Julie, “I did come quite a lot when the [boys] were really little. Then, more recently, when Natalie would get an assignment, I would drop everything and fly over. Being so far away is hard, but it does happen in a lot of families.”
Barr, who has been with the Seven Network since she was employed as a freelance news producer in 1994, says her job as Sunrise newsreader for more than 18 years allowed her to fulfil a childhood dream as well as raise a young family.
“Because of this job, I’ve been able to do school pick-up and wrangle them into bed. When they were little, that was the hard shift. Then in the last few years, when they got older, I’ve been able to jet over to cover stories and say, ‘Food is in the fridge, Mum is on the way to the airport.’ As they’ve got older, they’ve been excited by that,” she says with a laugh, claiming she gets her determination and her ability to talk from her mum.
“I think it’s wonderful that particularly boys see their mum’s career can be important, too.”
It’s also why she never bought into the line that she was playing bridesmaid to whoever was in the host chair of the breakfast show.
“Every interview I’ve ever done, people have said, ‘What’s next?’ And I’ve never been able to give a good answer because I loved my job, but people thought I should want something else. I actually didn’t. If Sam had wanted to stay the host of Sunrise for the next 15 years, that would have been fine with me, hand on heart,” Barr says.
“I started to think maybe there was something wrong with me that [I was not] striving for more. I was really happy and it was a fantastic job while I was bringing up two kids with my husband.”
But with her oldest now at university in Melbourne, and Hunter in Year 10, Barr says, “It’s almost the perfect time in my life to be offered the next rung on the ladder. Maybe it was just meant to be like this. I get all fatalistic the older I get, but maybe there was a reason I kept saying, ‘I’m happy’ then. Now, I’m ready.”
Being front and centre means there is also more of an expectation for the presenter to carry the weight of the show’s success.
“I think I would be lying if I said I didn’t look at the ratings every day. I don’t know many people on TV who don’t look at the ratings. I mean, that’s our bread and butter! Let’s face it, we all want to win,” she tells Stellar.
She has, however, turned off Twitter notifications and made a pact with herself never to read the comments on articles, hoping to keep any negativity at bay.
“We teach our kids that it’s OK if not everyone likes you, so I have to take that on board myself. There will be people out there that can’t stand me; they won’t like traits of mine and things I say, and that’s absolutely fine. So I have to live that lesson and not read all the bad stuff.”
No matter what happens, she knows she’s got her mother by her side.
“It’s 20 years this year since Dad died and I think we just both feel that it’s [special] that all this has happened now,” Barr says.
“If I’ve learnt anything over the past year, it’s to appreciate family even more. You don’t take anyone for granted, ever again, because you know it can be taken away. Time together is even more precious now.”
Originally published as Sunrise co-host Natalie Barr on ‘playing bridesmaid’ to Sam Armytage
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