Karl Stefanovic defends 60 Minutes’ Kyle Sandilands promo amid backlash

Karl Stefanovic has weighed in on the backlash over 60 Minutes’ Kyle Sandilands promo, insisting the gag was an “honest moment on camera”.

Karl Stefanovic has made it clear he’s standing firmly by 60 Minutes’ promotion of Kyle Sandilands’ appearance, describing the backlash as “complete BS”.

Nine’s current affairs program last week teased Kyle’s mysterious “health battle” in its promotional material for his interview with Stefanovic, but as “appalled” viewers found out last night, the radio star declared in the next sentence that he was joking.

“There’s a condition that I’ve been diagnosed with and I haven’t spoke to anyone about,” the program showed the shock jock saying, with both Kyle and co-host Jackie ‘O’ Henderson in tears.

An emotional Kyle revealed on the Kyle and Jackie O Show this morning that he’d actually been using humour to lighten the mood and cover up his real feelings – which was that he’d been battling with his mental health and felt “very alone”.

Stefanovic appeared on the show a short time later and was quick to rubbish the backlash, insisting the show had delivered on its promo promise.

“It’s complete BS, because the doctors actually said you could drop down at any second, dead, and you announced during the interview you had serious issues with your health,” he said, referring to a different part of the segment in which Kyle had his blood pressure checked and was found to be in the danger zone.

Stefanovic interviewed the radio host for Sunday night’s episode. Picture: Channel Nine

Stefanovic also insisted he and Jackie had known there was more to the story during the joint interview after Kyle said he was joking.

“When that moment happened at the end of the interview, I went along for the ride with Jackie O … We both were emotionally involved in whatever you were going to say,” he explained.

“I don’t really care for scoops and all that, but I actually genuinely felt for you. And I felt for Jackie O, because I could see she was feeling real emotion – and I started to feel it.

“We discussed it after (filming), remember Jackie O? We actually went away after you left, and went, ‘I think he’s serious, I think the way he delivered it and the way he spoke to us was genuinely in the moment’. Because you’re a lot of things – but when you go to that emotional level, I think it’s unguarded.

“It was an honest moment on camera.”

When Kyle joked that his friend had “missed the scoop” by failing to get him to talk about his real mental health issues, Stefanovic argued that he actually “did have everything there” in the segment.

“It was just your tomfoolery that covered it up,” he told him.

Kyle also slammed the media for the 60 Minutes controversy, blaming its coverage for the backlash.

“Why do you think the mainstream media is turning this into, that I don’t have a health problem, that it was some kind of pretend thing?” he asked Stefanovic.

“I don’t know, having not had the best relationship with mainstream media for some time …” the Today host replied with a laugh.

While Kyle was supportive of Stefanovic and 60 Minutes during the Nine host’s appearance on air, earlier on the show, he admitted he was surprised at how they’d chosen to promote the segment.

“I didn’t think they’d promo it like that, as if I was going to die,” he told Jackie O this morning.

Jackie then explained that a few weeks after filming, she’d asked the 60 Minutes producers whether they’d include Kyle’s joke.

“When Kyle dropped that joke in the room, you really had to be there to get an idea of how heavy it was … there was probably about 20 extra people in the room, it was before lockdown,” she said.

“The room was just silent after that. The interview ended, that was the last scene we did on that joint interview, and all 20 people didn’t know what to say – they didn’t know whether Kyle was a genius or a sociopath.”

Kyle told Jackie O he was joking after saying he needed to reveal a serious health condition. Picture: 60 Minutes/Channel 9

While the big health “bombshell” turned out to be a joke on 60 Minutes, Kyle did confess that he’s not in the best physical shape.

During the interview, Kyle described himself as a “big beetroot” that was “ready to explode with high blood pressure any second”.

He revealed his blood pressure “was good for the first time in probably fifteen years” and that he was hopeful, “maybe I won’t just die one day without any warning”. He described it as a “silent killer”.

But a check on the blood pressure machine during the interview revealed his blood pressure was high once again, with Stefanovic calling it a “grim prognosis”.

“That means at any stage I could die. Any … at any time. Day or night,” Kyle said.

“Where’s my doctor? (laughs) He’ll, he’ll die when he sees that.”