VWeekend: Deal or No Deal host Grant Denyer celebrates 25 years in showbiz
From feeling like ‘a big, fake pretender’ to winning a coveted Gold Logie, Grant Denyer has done the hard yards and still comes out smiling as he celebrates 25 years in television.
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Travelling five hours on a bus to spend your holidays learning the ropes of a regional newsroom isn’t how many high school students in the ’90s envision their few weeks away from the classroom.
On the cusp of their schooling drawing to a close, many were likely spending their days beachside, dinking their friends on a bike to the nearest milk bar to scoop up a mixed bag of lollies – a staple of the quintessential Aussie childhood.
For Grant Denyer, that familiar chime marking the end of term signalled something else; the chance to get a foot in the door of the very same industry which decades later would honour him with its most coveted award – a Gold Logie.
“I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to be capable of back then,” an earnest Denyer tells VWeekend for an exclusive chat to mark his 25th anniversary in show business.
“I knew I wasn’t going to become an engineer or a mathematician or a scientist. I actually remember my mum and dad going, ‘Oh god, what are we going to do with this guy?’ and I knew I was going to have to pull a rabbit out of a hat.”
Born in Gosford, NSW, Denyer moved to Hallam in Victoria at age 13, then shuttled north from Melbourne to Wagga Wagga for three consecutive years to become Prime TV’s resident work experience kid.
It was free labour – at times filled with menial tasks that go hand-in-hand with being the office junior – but a cheerful Denyer is adamant it has paid off in spades ever since. “It was the greatest thing I’ve ever done,” Denyer, 47, says.
“When people ask me, how do I get into television? That’s the only route I know. Sometimes the front door isn’t available to everyone but there is always another way.”
In fact, it was in that same newsroom where the treasured TV host earned his wings as a full-time journalist, ultimately setting the beginning of a stellar 25-year journey in motion.
“A big fake pretender, out of my depth and terrified,” the face of Deal or No Deal quips when asked how he felt walking into his first proper day on the job.
He continues: “You’re among a room full of proper journalists who’ve gone through university and I barely made it through high school.”
Chatting bright and early ahead of the Christmas break, Denyer’s warmth radiates through the phone line as he heads to the last day of filming Deal or No Deal in 2024; one of many shows he’s hosted since leaping from weatherman on Seven’s breakfast show Sunrise.
It’s a far cry from the budding young talent who, on his first-day reporting at Prime TV, walked through the doors donning his grandpa’s shirt and tie, and the only suit he could afford.
“I realised pretty quickly that I was a terrible journalist. I didn’t know much about the world, and I remember going to a fatal car accident as one of my first stories,” Denyer recalls in a refreshingly honest take on those early days.
“It was all pretty graphic and pretty serious, you know, seeing your first ever deceased body, and I thought, ‘Hmm, I’m not sure I’m cut out for this.’”
Sage advice from then Prime TV news chiefDoug Hogan – who Denyer maintains he owes his career to – would inspire the fresh-faced go-getter to find his feet as the “colour story guy”, tasked with putting a smile on viewers’ faces with his off-the-wall stories.
The Golden Rules to cut through: Don’t talk at an audience but talk with them, don’t use words you normally wouldn’t, and talk to people like you’re chatting with mates – but without the swearing.
“When you’re a kid, you don’t feel like you’re good enough, or you don’t feel like you’re smart enough, and you don’t feel like you know what you’re doing so you tend to put on a big boy’s voice and pretend you’re more serious than you are,” Denyer opens up.
“… I really wasn’t cut out for it but he maybe saw something in me that I didn’t even see in myself, he just let me make tons of mistakes.”
Hogan’s enduring support proved more formative than perhaps even he realised at the time, helping lay the foundations for Denyer to secure one of the most sought-after gigs on mainstream television.
“I didn’t really want to be a weatherman, but they were pretty insistent and I said, ‘What if I made it about almost anything but the weather?’ And they said, ‘As long as you read the temperature, Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney, you can do whatever you want,” he chuckles, looking back on his time as Sunrise’s weatherman from 2004 to 2006 and then again for three years in 2010.
Talk about letting a horse bolt from the gate.
Denyer explains the genius of it: “I just made it a massive adventure travel stunt segment. We were always setting new world records, broadcasting from the most incredible places, jumping out of planes, or wrestling crocodiles or bulls. I wanted to make something that was really exciting that woke people up in the morning, particularly after watching five minutes of the news which can be pretty grim and pretty heavy.”
Combining his two loves of television and adventure is not an opportunity lost on Denyer but, he says, it was putting a smile on the faces of viewers at home which he cherishes most.
“I got to be this awesome little three minutes that sort of made you smile again and made you feel good about the world, and put you back on your feet, and hopefully sent you off to have a great day,” he says proudly of the job which at one point saw him clock up 750 flights in only 3.5 years.
“Anyone who had just brought life into this world – if you’re a new mother – you’re up feeding at all hours of the night and the early morning, so I started to become part of that precious moment in their life.
“I get lots of kids come up to me now with their mums who say, ‘Oh, I was feeding little Timmy while watching you every morning on Sunrise.’ When they share those stories, it means a lot to me – it was a very special period.”
There’s been plenty of life-changing moments since, be it as a champion motor race driver or hosting and competing on some of the nation’s most popular TV shows.
A quick Google search uncovers Denyer’s both impressive and extensive CV: twice winning the Mirror Ball trophy on Dancing with the Stars, hosting Family Feud, surviving stomach-churning tasks in the jungle as part of I’m a Celebrity Get Me out Of Here and, most recently, taking part in the Amazing Race alongside his beloved wife of 15 years, Cheryl.
“Winning Dancing with the Stars the first time was a breakthrough that kicked off my hosting shows by myself, so that was really cool,” Denyer beams as he laments he’s the only contestant globally to become a dual champion.
“Family Feud was also a massive one because I wasn’t sure if my career was going to continue at that particular point. I had reached burnout, and I’d walked away from telly to go and work on myself, so I didn’t know if the door would open again. And then it came along, and it was this beautiful, really fun, silly, wild ride that kind of rebirthed my career, so that was really pivotal.
“But I think now to be game show Santa Claus here on Deal or No Deal and just handing out large amounts of money to really wonderful people at a time of high cost of living feels really good. It’s way more dramatic than I thought it would be. It’s funnier than I thought it would be. It has more heart than I expected.”
Simply put, even decades after getting his start, Denyer has that je ne sais quoi – a certain magnetic energy – that television producers and audiences cannot get enough of.
But that doesn’t mean every project has landed perfectly.
“It’s an amazing industry that’s given me an incredible life but you’ve got to fight tooth and nail for everything you’ve got the entire way, it’s a competitive game. You live and die by the last show you were on, your reputation hangs on the success of every program, and yet, there’s still one hundred reasons why a show might not work,” Denyer says.
“... That’s why winning something like a Gold Logie was a really emotional experience for me. You feel like you’re running on a treadmill turned up to 11 your whole life and fighting for every rung of the television ladder, knowing that the person next to you could come and take your job. So to finally get there, under that intensity, when that moment happens, it’s a beautiful thing.”
Denyer pauses briefly as his mind wandersback to that emotional moment.
“It surprised me how emotional I got because it’s a fight to the top and I’d hope to think that I did it with humour and integrity. And yeah, there’s been a few bumps along the way...
“The failures hurt, but as you get older, you start to not be too hard on yourself, and you realise that failure is just a redirection into the direction you’re supposed to be going in the first place. Becoming a father has helped too,” he says of daughters Sailor, 13, Scout, nine, and Sunday, three.
One thing fans of the proud dad appreciate is his willingness to lean into the ugly, to strip back any perceived notion that his life is all glamour and perfection without any everyday heartache.
“I did the Imperfects podcast and that was kind of the first time I really went deep,” he says.
“I didn’t know where it was going so I figured I’ll just go with whatever happens. It got deep fast, and I’m so used to being the guy who’s the first to race to the joke, I just forgot about that and I let it all out. When you have people who are in the thick of their struggles come up to you to say it really helped them, that’s so nice to hear. They say, ‘We thought you were perfect, we thought you were flawless.’
Denyer continues: “I feel like I’m part of the problem. I’ve been the glossy, shiny, smiley guy, right? But that’s impossible, that’s not real. No one can be like that 24/7.”
It’s no understatement to say that the multi-Logie nominee and winner is lucky to be alive.
A string of potentially life-altering injuries he sustained has been well-documented, the first in September 2008 when Denyer broke his back during a monster truck demonstration for Sunrise, leading to a dependence on painkillers and an uncertainty if he would ever walk again.
The second was during a horror rally car crash near Melbourne when Denyer and his co-driver Dale Moscatt were both rushed to hospital after their vehicle struck a large root before ricocheting into a tree and coming to a stop down an embankment.
“I was always an aggressive kind of go-getter,” Denyer says candidly of his thirst for adventure, for new experiences.
“... I had a success motor racing career, and so, you’re never winning enough trophies, you’re never getting enough awards, and you always want more TV shows. There were moments when I might have been juggling four projects at once and also trying to race professionally on the weekends. I wanted to live all my dreams – we only have one shot at this.”
Perhaps, Denyer concedes, he’s been guilty of hitting the throttle a little too hard at times.
“I was relentless, and at times, yeah, I took on too much and I burnt myself out, but they were just little course corrections along the way,” he says, gearing up for a mammoth final day of production at the Docklands studios.
Just 48 hours later, and only minutes after wrapping up his VWeekend shoot, the dedicated family man beelines straight to the airport to eagerly reunite with his girls at their little slice of paradise, a farm in Bathurst.
“Living in the country has been a big game changer for me, connecting with nature. Doing things that make you happy is important, not just only having a career. I ride dirt bikes to clear my head, I like going out amongst the hills and the forests and the mountains. It’s just balance. Spending time with my girls is as healthy and rewarding as anything else.
“With something like Deal or No Deal, we film high intensity and we’ve got a whole year’s worth of episodes – 195 – done in about three and a half months so you can then slow back down and either choose to embed yourself with the kids or maybe do some other projects that make you happy.”
So, what do the next 25 years hold for Denyer?
“I’ve got a dream to create my own shows now. That’s kind of the only box I really haven’t ticked and that’s the direction I would like to head in, so I’ve got a few new projects that I’ve been passionately working on and hope to take those to market soon,” he reveals.
“It’s pretty wild. I still feel like I’m that work experience kid just annoying everyone, carrying the tripod for the news cameraman, or washing the news cars, or just looking for any role where I could be useful.
“I wasn’t the smartest, I wasn’t the prettiest, I wasn’t very worldly, but I was just young, keen and eager, and that was the only ace that I had so I played it, and it worked out okay, I think.”
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