Vault of secrets: Gossip girl who knows all about Aussie stars’ private lives
She’s the controversial gossip girl most feared by influencers and reality stars. James Weir gets a glimpse inside the vault of intel she hasn’t yet aired.
Influencers and reality stars wearing Matrix-inspired outfits jostle in frantic scenes outside the industrial shed of an old railway yard, oblivious that the woman they fear most is about to be locked inside with them.
It’s another day at Australian Fashion Week in Sydney and everyone who wants to be someone is out in force.
“Last calls! Last calls!” yells the security guard, his voice bouncing off the concrete alleyway that has become a makeshift backdrop for selfies.
The clock ticks over to 2.14pm. The grace period is running out.
“Doors closing!”
BANG!
“Doors closed!”
For a few minutes, the alleyway is a ghost town. It wouldn’t be at all surprising for the crisp Autumn breeze to blow by a tumbleweed, made of pink tulle.
Clip-clop, clip-clop
The silence is broken. Megan Pustetto walks along the cement next to the railway tracks.
“It’s probably a good thing — everyone inside hates me,” she sighs at the sight of the locked entrance.
She doesn’t bother begging the security guard for access. She wouldn’t be caught dead making desperate pleas. That’s the kind of embarrassing moment she herself would report on.
The journalist’s gossip empire, So Dramatic!, has swiftly grown since it launched almost three years ago, becoming a must-read (and must-listen) for lovers of tabloid tittle-tattle. Her podcast racked up about 500,000 monthly downloads for April and the accompanying website experienced its biggest period last March, scoring 2.7 million clicks.
She’s late to the runway show this afternoon because gossip never stops. She was up at 6am to record the daily podcast, manage her editorial team and attend seven meetings. Then there was a lengthy background interview with a source related to the death hoax of former reality star Dannii Erskine — an ongoing saga that has caused a stir over the past week.
A lot of her day is spent chatting to sources and TV contestants, often for hours.
“It becomes so intense. It becomes quite an involved relationship,” she says.
She was recently on the phone for three hours with one TV personality who’s sitting inside the fashion show right now. “She told me stuff that blew my mind.”
When is she publishing the story? She’s not.
“A lot of stuff doesn’t go to print or air,” she says. There’s a vault of secrets and intel that she may or may not use in the future. “I’m sitting on a bank of stories.”
Her average workday is 12-hours long, but it can blow out to 16 hours during peak TV seasons. And despite two years of minimal sleep, the 32-year-old looks like she belongs at Fashion Week. She’s wearing a neon orange P.E. Nation sports top with a white corset around her waist. Her orange makeup and the sunset-hued lenses of her cycling sunglasses tie the look together.
She laughs at herself. “I didn’t make it to the show but I did have time to match my eyeshadow to my top.”
Her voice is soft and sly. Responses are streaked with sarcasm. It’s just the right tone for an omnipresent gossip girl.
“Here comes the wave of hate,” she raises an eyebrow when the runway show ends and the doors bust back open, releasing the tsunami of Instagram identities and reality stars who she knows far too much about.
There’s Olivia! The Married At First Sight villain who attracted national furore for leaking a co-star’s nudes. And there’s Cody! Another Married At First Sight villain who caused outrage when he told his TV wife he wasn’t attracted to her because she’s Asian.
“You know what would be so funny?” Megan says, observing from the sidelines. “If I went up to them and tried talking to them. They’d run the other way. I think I need to have a drink before that.”
She promptly makes her way to the VIP bar.
Megan’s career took a turn about a decade ago when she went from working in fashion to reporting on showbiz. She wound up filing for Aussie supermarket tabloids like Woman’s Day and soon noticed the cash being splashed – tens of thousands of dollars – by magazine editors on stories from freelance photographers and writers.
She broke out on her own, teamed up with two paps, and zoned in on upcoming reality contestants – co-ordinating with their schedules to get photos while also mining their secrets. It was a story factory.
“It was very successful and it was very lucrative,” she says.
In the first year of operation, she says she made about four times her magazine salary, after cuts. But it soon died.
Covid hit. News outlets slashed budgets. Then New Idea and Woman’s Day – long-time rival publications that once fought over stories in vigorous bidding wars – merged to the same publisher, wiping out the competition that would often lead to big pay days for Megan and the paps.
That’s when she started the So Dramatic! podcast.
Out of desperation?
“More out of boredom,” she says, walking past Janelle and Tahnee, contestants from this year’s season of Married At First Sight.
The girls wave excitedly at Megan.
“I had all these stories and I didn’t want this content to go to waste,” she continues.
Her exclusives range from delightful morsels (”A MAFS bride BEGGED a popular designer for an invite to his Australian Fashion Week show and we’re cringing”) to the more serious matters of AVOs, affairs and police charges for distributing revenge porn.
The podcast was monetised by the second episode. While she’s not personally making the windfall of cash that came in the freelance days, the So Dramatic! empire has grown its content output and now includes a team of three writers, an audio editor and sales reps.
“The business is making more than what I was earning before, but I have staff to pay and expenses,” she says.
Eventually, she’d like to add a live radio show to the mix.
A “little black book” of sources keeps the “tea” constantly replenished. It includes the usual contacts: producers, cameramen, sound techs, post-production editors. And, of course, reality stars – past and present – talking about themselves and each other. But there’s also more high-profile identities. Some are household names.
“Presenters, hosts. People high up on shows. I’ve had some people that have really shocked me come forward to spill tea.”
There’s also the tip-off submissions box.
“If it’s anonymous, I don’t always trust it, or I’ll maybe use it as a lead and further research,” she says.
Many of the tipsters don’t bother concealing their identity. Megan says audiences would be surprised by the kinds of people who are willing to air the secrets of their nearest and dearest.
“I’ve had so many family members spill tea on their family,” she says.
But can gossip ever be completely accurate? This week, Megan found herself in the headlines after spotlighting suspicious online activity that claimed Dannii Erskine, a former contestant on Channel 7 reality show Bride and Prejudice, had died in a car crash. Shock reveal: Erskine is actually alive.
Megan says it all started with “weird Instagram posts” and Facebook messages, then emails from someone claiming to be Erskine’s sister. She says when she investigated it further, she received bounce back emails and unanswered calls.
So she aired it all on the podcast.
“I just presented it and said, this is suspicious – the email bounced back, she didn’t return my calls. I was basically just transparent and said, ‘This is the info that I’ve got, it doesn’t really check out, but there are claims that she’s dead’.”
Then it came to light that Erskine was alive. Media Watch slammed the reporting, and the mainstream outlets that followed with incorrect reports of the death, as “shameful”. Megan’s listeners, known as “the drama army”, raised their hashtags in support.
“My listeners are in the comments, defending me. I don’t really care because I know that they know what was said,” she dismisses the drama.
Inside the VIP bar, Will Stokoe lingers nearby. He’s an influencer who has made headlines as the on-off boyfriend of former The Bachelor contestant Bella Varelis, who has blocked Megan on Instagram for publishing various reports. Bella has been hanging around Fashion Week the last few days, taking selfies in trendy outfits. Megan’s not scared of potential confrontations.
“Last year I had a run-in at Fashion Week with Tamara,” she recalls, referring to former Married At First Sight contestant Tamara Djordjevic.
The awkward encounter came after a disgruntled Tamara started trolling Megan for some stories she had written.
“It was so funny. Tamara and some of the MAFS girls prank called me and left me a voicemail saying, ‘Megan, you f**kin’ salami c**t’ – basically paying out my Italian heritage,” she recalls.
Naturally, Megan got revenge by replaying the voicemail on-air. (“Who in their right mind would send an abusive voicemail to a gossip journalist with a goddam podcast and zero f**ks to give?” she told listeners. “I have got more receipts than a Kmart register and that is probably where Tamara is gonna end up after I play these voicemails”).
A few weeks later, she arrived at a Fashion Week show and sat in the front row only to spot Tamara sitting two rows behind her. “She avoided me and, like, ran away after the salami voicemail.”
Part of the war Tamara and other reality stars wage against Megan is fuelled by their belief the gossip queen is bullying them. Megan brushes it off.
“People who go on reality TV need to understand that, in doing so, they’re putting themselves and their lives up for public dissection and me reporting on their behaviour is not bullying,” she says.
Megan says there’s a big difference between So Dramatic! and the rise of online “shade” accounts or “tea” Instagrams – like DeuxMoi, an Instagram profile that launched in lockdown and gained over 1.9 million followers by pumping out anonymous insider tips about celebrities.
“I put my name and face to everything that I put out because I’m confident with what I publish. I know how to do my job,” she says. “I don’t mind those (anonymous) accounts but I think it’s a bit cowardly that they don’t put their face to it.”
Megan leaves the VIP bar and strolls outside, hoping to spot some reality contestants. Then, as influencers pose for photos against the exposed brick walls, she quietly joins them.
“I’m not a natural,” she mocks herself, before reviewing the shots and criticising her outfit.
She walks backward and strikes another pose for the camera. She quickly gives up. It’s taking too much time. She needs to head back into the VIP bar to do some work on her laptop. She’ll check in on her writers, edit some stories. Then when she gets home tonight, she’ll stay up until 1am, editing a podcast episode that needs to be published in the morning.
As she walks away, she runs into Vakoo, a former contestant from The Bachelor and Love Island. Vakoo mentions one of her co-stars, Maddy Gillbanks, who was apparently terrified to meet Megan.
“I told her, Megan’s not that scary,” Vakoo says.
Megan smirks. “That’s so dramatic.”
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