Is This My Beautiful Life? Jessica Rowe lays everything bare in new memoir

JESSICA Rowe’s spat with Eddie McGuire was ugly and public. But more happened that you don’t know about.

JESSICA Rowe appears to the outside world as a woman who has it all. An amazing career hosting Studio 10, a loving husband in Peter Overton, and two wonderful daughters. But a few years ago her life was derailed.

Famously ‘boned’ from Channel 9, she found her face plastered in newspapers with headlines like, ‘The most annoying person on television.’

All the while she was struggling to conceive, and dealing with the emotional and physical turmoil of going through IVF.

In her deeply honest memoir Is This My Beautiful Life?, Jessica Rowe has decided to lay everything bare.

News.com.au has this exclusive extract.

***

Laughter bounced off the wooden floorboards of the boutique pub, the crush of people and the dodgy acoustics making it hard to hear anything. A big group of journalists and producers had got together to farewell Mark Llewellyn, Channel Nine’s head of news and current affairs.

I had to make an appearance: Mark had been the first to approach me about joining Today and I was unsure how secure my position would become once he left the network. I kept looking around for a way to sneak out of the pub quietly.

Work get-togethers made me nervous; I always ended up blurting out some inappropriate comment, too loud, too political. My default position included plenty of nodding and smiling, trying to remain neutral to what was being discussed by my colleagues.

Looking around the room at this farewell, I could see 60 Minutes reporters Liz Hayes, Charles Wooley and my long-time ‘girl crush’ Jana Wendt. Soon Jana walked over to our group and I was immediately star struck. My throat went dry as she turned directly to me and said, “You’ve been getting a lot of scrutiny, haven’t you? Just hang in there.”

“I’ll try,” I managed to reply.

“It’s happened a lot to me over the years — you feel like the media attention couldn’t get any worse and then it does for no real reason. But then it starts to bottom out and swing upwards in your favour, and there’s no real reason why it does. You just have to ride it out.”

Hosting Today with Karl Stefanovic tested Jessica Rowe’s thick skin.

I appreciated Jana’s advice and I couldn’t quite believe my role model had words of wisdom just for me! I knew that working in the media could be tough and it wasn’t a career for the faint-hearted. I also understood how brutal it could be for women. Commercial television is still primarily run by men, and some of them have very outdated, sexist views.

I would like to say that it’s changing and I suppose it is, but there have been numerous times during my career when I have been disadvantaged because of my gender.

How can I forget the time when a boozy, domineering and terrifying news director pinned me against a hallway wall as he lurched back to work after his usual long, alcohol-fuelled lunch. He pressed his body against me but I managed to get away into one of the editing suites, where I rang one of the senior executives in tears. He counselled me and suggested that it wasn’t a big deal; I got the distinct impression I should keep my mouth shut if I wanted to stay working in that newsroom.

Later in my career, after I had been reading the five o’clock evening news on the Ten Network for some years, I asked my boss if I could have an opportunity to read the main news story. I co-hosted with Ron Wilson, who read the first news story every night and also got to do all the live interviews. I figured I had paid my dues and it was reasonable to share the lead news story and the interviews each night.

“JC, have you got a minute?” I asked.

“Sure, lovey.”

“How about Ron and I alternate reading the main news story each night?”

“No.”

“No? Why not?”

“Because Ron’s a man and you’re a woman!”

Jessica Rowe was told she couldn’t read the lead news story ‘Because Ron’s a man and you’re a woman!’

Despite knowing deep down that that was the reason I hadn’t been given the same opportunities as my male colleague, I was gobsmacked to have my boss articulate it so bluntly. I try to pick my battles but this was one I was prepared to fight. The next day I organised to have a meeting with the human resources department, who tried to fob me off by saying it was just my boss being his typical self, and of course that was not the reason.

“So what is the reason then?” I probed.

“Um, there is no reason. It’s just the way it has always been done.”

“Well, it’s time that changed then,” I persisted. “If you look at the bulletins across the network, no female news presenter gets the chance to read the lead news story.”

“Really?”

By the end of the week I was finally given the chance to read the lead news story. The other female presenters around the network were now also ‘permitted’ to read the main news story on occasion. I had come a long way from the woman who’d be close to tears after being told the wrong pronunciations for difficult words and names by a male colleague. Thank goodness for the autocue operator, the person responsible for feeding the scripts through a device that would be projected onto the camera, who would yell out across the studio floor the correct way to say some of the trickier names. I wasn’t going to give up my chosen career easily.

The closest I came to cracking during my Today experience was when I woke up one Sunday morning in 2006 to see more unpleasant headlines in both Sydney newspapers. The Sunday Telegraph TV guide included a cover photo after a poll voted me ‘The Most Annoying Person on Television’. The Sun-Herald had an article entitled ‘The Loneliest Job on TV’, which went on to describe how increasingly isolated I had become in my position on Today. It was the final straw. Although neither article was the cruellest I had read, I felt at my lowest ebb.

The front page of the June 11 2006 TV Guide said Jessica Rowe was voted the 'most annoying TV star'.

What added to my anxiety was the campaign being run within Channel Nine. I was gobsmacked when I saw A Current Affair a few nights later had a story on how I was the most annoying person on television. I could usually laugh this kind of thing off, but it was all becoming too much. Peter rang his boss that night and ranted on my behalf, telling him that he was close to quitting. I told my loyal husband to calm down as we would need at least one pay cheque, since I looked like losing my job at any moment!

My mood wasn’t helped by the anxiety I had over the future of Milano, who was now six weeks young in my womb. While I flicked through the newspapers alone in bed, Peter once again on the other side of the world, I wondered whether it was all worth it. Yes, I could curl up under this doona all day and hide or I could get on with it. After wallowing for a few hours, I realised I had to keep going. The worse it got, the more stubborn I became about it all not compromising my professionalism.

I kept setting the alarm and showing up on time to do my job. There was no way I was giving up; instead I chose to dig in my Dolce & Gabbana heels and be professional. Karl Stefanovic, one of my Today colleagues, also found himself targeted by the media during that time, and the pair of us would try and laugh it off. It was odd sharing a couch with my other co-hosts, three hours a day, five mornings a week, and have them say nothing about the situation. Their silence made me feel more isolated as there was a sense of everyone for themselves. It was not a team, and it was harder and harder to pretend to be a happy family on air. I’m still at a loss why no one said anything — perhaps it was simply because they wanted to keep their jobs and didn’t want bad press about me to rub off on to them.

Through it all, Jessica Rowe and Peter Overton held their heads up high and kept smiling for the cameras.

***

A few weeks later I was sitting on the couch in front of the television. The 7.30 Report had just finished, and I was making a few notes about the interview host Kerry O’Brien had completed with the foreign minister, Alexander Downer. I was going to be interviewing the minister the next morning, so I wanted to make sure I was across the issues. It was getting close to bedtime, so I was tempted to ignore my ringing mobile, but I thought I should answer it, just in case it was work.

It was Eddie. “I tried to ring Peter to apologise, but I can’t reach him ...” I could hear the panic in his voice.

“What?”

“As a husband he would be furious ...”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know, sorry for saying ...”

“What?”

“But I didn’t say it.”

“What didn’t you say, Eddie?”

“I didn’t say I was going to bone you.”

His explanation didn’t help me. “So why did you want to apologise to Peter if you didn’t say it?”

“I’ve issued a statement to the papers saying I support you. Come in tomorrow after the show and we’ll have a talk.”

I hung up the phone, sitting very still on the couch trying to fathom what Eddie had just told me. I had never heard the word ‘bone’ used in that sort of context before, but I didn’t like the sound of it. I was angry but strangely calm, as if this phone call had landed me right into the centre of the perfect storm that had been hurling me around these past couple of months. Peter had just arrived home, and I called out to him from the living room.

“Eddie just rang,” I said.

“Really? He left a message on my mobile. What did he want?” asked Peter.

“He rang to say he wanted to apologise to you.”

“What?”

“For saying he was going to bone me ...”

“Bone you — who the f*** says that?!”

“I feel sick,” I said.

A few minutes later my mobile rang. It was a journalist friend, who told me that Crikey, an online media website, had published a sworn affidavit made by my former boss Mark Llewellyn. Included in the document were details of a conversation about my future at the Nine Network. Peter and I tried to log on to the site but the story had already been taken down.

“I want to go in and talk to him, sort out what’s going on,” Peter said furiously.

What was going on? I sensed something had just shifted in my universe, the planets had realigned in my favour. Kissing my darling Peter goodnight, I told him to wait and see what the morning would bring.

That night I fell into the deepest, most delightful sleep I’d had in many months. I slept well because I had a sense that my rock bottom had levelled out.

This extract was reproduced with permission, from Is This My Beautiful Life? by Jessica Rowe, published on Wednesday 26 August 2015 by Allen and Unwin, RRP $29.99.