VWeekend: How Georgie Tunny finds joy in being the go-to girl
Georgie Tunny is the happy face viewers of The Project know and love, but she’s also involved in a slew of other TV gigs and enjoying success in the podcast realm. So just how does she juggle the chaos and still keep her zest for life?
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Television darling and all-round media star Georgie Tunny is well and truly in her golden era both personally and professionally – but don’t ask her for any hot tips on how she manages it all.
Her days are often spent front and centre on The Project desk but in her “spare” time – if you could even call it that – she’s busy serving up award-winning podcasts, captivating audiences with her MC duties, and filling in on a slew of other hit television shows.
In many ways, Tunny’s become the go-to name who embodies that sought-after mix of sheer talent and tireless work ethic. A genuine love for the job helps, too.
At this point, it seems all too obvious to ask … but just how does she balance the demands of a jam-packed schedule and still maintain some level of sanity?
True to style, with the same sense of joy and penchant for humour that the public know and love her for, Tunny quips: “I would be in a psych ward if I didn’t have the friends around me that I do.
“Honestly, if I didn’t have Robert (Mills) and I didn’t have all of my gorgeous family and my friends that I’ve made in this industry, I would be having far more existential crises than I do.
I already have them daily.”
Speaking candidly with VWeekend, a radiant Tunny admits that she and fiance Robert Mills, who fell madly in love with each other after he slid into her DMs, haven’t quite figured out how to master their busy lives.
“I was just saying to Robert this morning, our schedules are so crazy,” Tunny says. “It’s so hard to be able to balance everything. We can never nail the social life and work life, and our life. The work-life balance is something we’ve always struggled with in our relationship.
“I’m far too disorganised to be organised and lead an organised life – I don’t know what that is. I always love it when people say it’s really important to get the systems right because I’ve never nailed it. And I think a good routine for me would make an organised person probably need to go into therapy.”
Last summer alone saw the Brisbane native and her four pals create their chart-topping podcast Ready For It, inspired by Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, while also pairing up with good friend and 7News personality Abbey Gelmi for Two Good Sports where they unpack all the latest sporting news.
“One of the proudest things for me at the moment, other than my dream gig working on The Project, is in the podcast realm,” Tunny, 33, beams. “I’m so proud that I’ve stuck to it and that we were able to build them up to where they are now, and especially when it comes to Ready For It – we came up with that. It was a group of five friends thinking up a podcast idea and we recorded it all in two days, and then it became one of the most listened to podcasts in the country. It was one of those moments when you get amongst your best mates and you’re like, ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be fun if’ … but we actually made the ‘if’ happen.”
Even more of a testament to the quality of Tunny, co-host Kirsten Ploog and their wonderful friends’ hard work unpacking all things Swifties is their recent win for Best Society & Culture Podcast 2024 at the Radio Today Awards.
Did we mention this was all on top of her regular duties for Network Ten’s long-time panel shows and, of course, hosting another new show for Network Ten, The Brighter Side.
A familiar lyric made popular by hitmaker Taylor Swift hums down the phone line as conversation flows, one that perhaps sums up her state of mind better than any age-old analogy: “I cry a lot but I am so productive”.
“Seriously, I still don’t know how I quite survived,” she laughs, a clear sense of sincerity mixed with appreciation for the opportunities lacing her tone. When we meet at the Ovolo Hotel in South Yarra for the photo shoot days earlier, Tunny shares that she’s woken at 5am each day of the Paris Olympics to deliver special recap episodes of her podcast with a pregnant Gelmi.
“I am probably averaging about four hours of sleep. I sleep where I can. It’s back to like shift work life, even though I’m not working shift work,” Tunny laughs, still radiating positivity.
“That’s sort of what it feels like because I’m doing a lot, but it is all stuff that I love doing, and it’s all stuff that I’m so happy that I get to do.”
One thing that helps bring some stability to her world, she confides, is the return of Mills to Melbourne after he temporarily shifted to Sydney for much of the year to continue his stellar run as Shakespeare in the Broadway hit & Juliet.
“It’s just really nice. Coming home and the lights are turned on. It’s for small things like that, that I’ve really missed having him around,” Tunny says of their loved-up reunion back in her adopted hometown of Melbourne.
“I’ll come home and he’s made a roast, he’s done all of the washing and I just sit on the couch, and he feeds me and I’m like this is so wonderful – and he genuinely loves doing it. I don’t know how I found this unicorn, but he existed. My schedule has been so full-on even since he’s been back, but it’s just been nice to have a teammate.
It feels like there’s someone in my corner to help me through it all.”
It’s been quite the ride to success for Tunny, who always had a love for sport growing up but never quite the skills to match. At least that’s what she says.
Though her name’s not etched into the history books for being an all-time high scorer on the field, Tunny most certainly made her mark in the sporting industry when she became one of the first faces to step into and drive female-led coverage while presenting at ABC News Breakfast.
Asked about that time, she reflects: “It will probably be one of those moments that I look back on in 10 years’ time and be really proud that I was a part of it, if that makes sense, and that I was, as you say, one of the faces because right now I can’t really see it because I’m in it.
“It’s so hard to see the changes that are happening when they are happening because in your mind, it’s always going to be glacial.
“We’ve made so much progress, and yet, I’ll still get people come up to me on the street and be like, ‘So, do you even like sport?’ That’s the number one question that I get asked,
and I would definitely say most of my female colleagues too.
“I think that once we get more female-led media companies, once we get more women in middle management, once we get more front-facing women as the head or CEOs of sports organisations, then it’ll probably feel a little bit more real. And if I can be counted in the same breath as those types of women, I would probably say it’s the honour of my life.”
Tunny’s call to join The Project full-time came shortly before long-time host Carrie Bickmore called time on her tenure in November 2022 – the first of many high-profile departures from the show.
“Do you know what? It was actually really fun because there was almost like this new sense of energy,” Tunny reflects of those early days welcoming her new co-hosts.
“Sarah (Harris), Sam (Taunton) and I bonded immediately in those initial stages with Waleed; it was so wonderful because we kind of had this instant connection, and that’s been really, really fun.
“Honestly, I think this is such a golden period of my life and my career. I pinch myself every day with the things that I get to do for ‘work’, and I’m using inverted commas there. It’s stuff that I had always dreamed about doing.”
But that doesn’t mean her career is all glam and all glory.
Touching on untangling her self-identity from professional success, Tunny refreshingly admits: “I’ve been the ultimate people pleaser for a lot of my life.”
“ … I feel like there is definitely a sense that what I’m doing is really important and that this is not just work for me. It represents my life and who I am as a person. Most people who work in media feel that way. They will put themselves behind anything when it comes to work.
“We live to work, we don’t work to live, but the danger in doing that is when things don’t go the way that you want, then you’re like, ‘Well, hold on, what is my life then if I don’t have work?’ So that’s something that I’ve had to learn.”
One of those moments was when her good friend, much-loved presenter Tony Armstrong, was named the new sports presenter for ABC News Breakfast over Tunny in 2021. It didn’t feel great in the moment but without a doubt Tunny knows it was the best move.
Though how does she manage to separate the Georgie Tunny, media darling who is largely fuelled by her craft, from Georgie Tunny, outstanding human being with unbridled zest for life?
“Therapy, actual therapy. It was a really big turning point in being able to kind of extricate the inextricable, shall we say, from where I began and work ended,” she says. “What I started to learn, I think this just comes with maturity and doing different things and having different opportunities, just trying and seeing what you like and, also, finding your voice more.”
While it’s been a stellar year capped off with dozens of professional highs, Tunny is more than ready to kick back and reconnect with Mills away from the grind on an upcoming jaunt to New York and Europe.
Fans shouldn’t expect a surprise post to social media announcing the talented couple, who just celebrated their six-year anniversary, got hitched abroad.
Tunny laughs: “We can’t even figure out a date to get married. Our diaries are so crazy, and we’re just terrible planners anyway.”
So, what about constantly being hit with questions about when they’ll enter that next chapter – of parenthood?
“That’s probably the second most-asked question. I find it awkward but it also doesn’t bother me so much,” Tunny says.
“I actually think, and this is probably very much not the norm, but Robert gets it so much more than me because he’s older. He’s always got some sort of pressure, whether it be family or friends, because he’s nearly a decade older than me.
“But we’re both very, very unaffected by it, and we take it as, ‘Oh, it’s very nice that people are interested, I guess’.”
Still, it’s something the much-loved couple talk about “very, very often”.
“We want to have a family. I had never really considered the thought about having kids until I met him. I just thought I wasn’t very maternal but then I met him and he, again, just completely shifted everything in my life in a good way.
“ … I’m still very much living a selfish life right now, in that I am so career focused. But I’m also learning not to be as career-first in everything that I do.
“My big focus at the moment, amidst all the chaos, is not rushing through it all, because I’m very bad at that. I’m very bad at immediately going, ‘OK, well, what’s next? What’s next?’
“I’m conscious that, you know, this may never be my life again, to be honest, and I just want to enjoy it as much as I can.”
Sorry, Robert. We asked about you getting a dog and it’s not looking good.
“Oh, no, he can never read this. Do you know what? He’s still desperate for a dog. He thinks that he’ll be getting one for Christmas. On the record, he will not be, which I’ve told him.
“Having a dog is one of the greatest joys in life but we are far too busy.”
The Project airs Sunday-Friday on 10 and 10 Play
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