Sam Armytage on the ‘giant relief’ of quitting Sunrise

Former Sunrise host Sam Armytage has opened up about the relief she felt stepping off the brekkie TV treadmill – and what she doesn't miss.

Former Sunrise host Samantha Armytage has opened up about the “giant relief” she’s felt since quitting breakfast television in 2021.

Armytage, who is set to host the new season of Farmer Wants A Wife, debuting on Seven on Easter Monday, said she thought people would judge her when she walked away from her “huge job” as co-host of Sunrise two years ago.

“So many people want those jobs that, when you walk away from a big one, everyone goes, what?!” she told Stellar in a new interview, out today.

Between Weekend Sunrise and then Sunrise, Armytage did breakfast television for 14 years.

“But I’m very proud of myself for doing it. And I’m quite chuffed at how people have reacted; and by that I mean my friends and family and also people I don’t know on the street. I haven’t been on air for two years, so people could have forgotten me.”

Armytage hosted Weekend Sunrise from 2007 to 2013, before moving to weekdays to co-host Sunrise with David Koch until she announced her departure in 2021. She said after 14 years of early starts, she was grateful to have her evenings back – a feeling echoed by fans of the show who approach her in public.

“I still will be having drinks with girlfriends and they’ll say, ‘Good on you, we’ve got your back and we’re so glad you can stay up now – it’s 8pm and you’re still out of bed!’ And then people on the street, viewers and listeners, people are so divine. They’ve just been so supportive. I love the fact that people will still lean over the trolleys in Woolies and grab me on the arm and say, ‘I really miss you and I’m so happy you’re happy.’”

Sam Armytage and husband Richard Lavender on the cover of Stellar.

Armytage’s departure from breakfast television came shortly after she married partner Richard Lavender in December 2020. The pair now live a quiet life in the NSW Southern Highlands.

“I think we make a good match. I was very lucky to find him at that point in my life,” Armytage told Stellar, while Lavender told the magazine that his wife of two-and-a-half years “was just looking for something a bit different when she met me.”

Asked her thoughts on the current state of breakfast television nowadays, Armytage said that as an “outside observer” she “wouldn’t throw stones” – but also revealed the one inescapable part of being a brekkie TV host that she doesn’t miss at all.

“I’m not in there having a go anymore, and I’m relieved not to be. And I’m relieved I don’t have to talk about Harry and Meghan every day. That is a giant relief to me,” she said.

“I’m very choosy about where I get my news from these days. I don’t consume a lot of it. I do enough to be well informed and [have] good dinner party conversation. When you’re working in it full-time, you have to be across all of it. And I don’t think that’s terribly healthy. So I’ve taken a big step back from that. It’s quite enjoyable.”

Read the full interview with Sam Armytage in today’s Stellar, free with the Herald Sun and Sunday Telegraph.