Stepmum’s the word for Julia Zemiro, host of RocKwiz
The host of Home Delivery and RocKwiz, J ulia Zemiro, 53, says although she seems extroverted she doesn’t party a lot.
Your partner has two boys. What’s something nobody tells you about being a stepmum?
I had a stepmum when I was growing up as well. She was fantastic. She was like an aunt or this cool older sister you could go and talk to. I was 12 already when they got together; similarly, my stepsons were already 11 and 12 [when I met their dad]. You don’t want to replace their mum. I remember my own stepmum really valuing my mum’s place … It’s a bit more complicated as a step-parent; you need to know that you’re a friend. My stepsons are good company and we’ve gone on a couple of holidays together to New Zealand and Denmark … Do you know what the name for stepmother or stepfather is in Danish (their dad is Danish)? They are literally called bonus mum and bonus dad.
In Julia Zemiro’s Home Delivery, entering its eighth season on the ABC, you take people back to where they grew up. How does the childhood home shape a person?
We see them actually reflecting on their home. There’s the obvious things like ‘I remember my house being bigger’ or ‘I remember my house being different’. When we took Celeste Barber back to her home, she kept saying ‘I can’t believe it’ because I think in her mind, she had remembered it as not being as grand or something and she realised it was actually quite a nice place. It shows that memory plays a funny part. You think you remember something a certain way but when you go back you go ‘wow, I had that really wrong’. It’s always interesting to see people reflect on that.
From Barber to Atlassian CEO Scott Farquhar and performer Casey Donovan, all your guests are involved in quite ambitious pursuits. Can we glean anything about the ingredients for success from their journeys home?
I think all of them would go ‘I never went into anything that I do with ingredients of success’. Celeste liked drama, she had a bit of ADD at school and they took her to dance classes, and that’s where she got out all her energy but she also loved it. If you love something and you feel good doing it why wouldn’t you try to do a job with it? Casey could sing and it was actually her stepdad who told her to go on Australian Idol. Sometimes we need a parent or a teacher to push us a little bit.
Have you been back to your childhood home?
I’ve got a couple. I’ve got one on Bondi Road. Then my parents separated. And then there was a flat in Bondi Junction. I’ve not been inside them. I’d love to do a Home Delivery but we’ve always said that if I do one on myself it should be the last show I ever do. If I become the subject I think it could take away from my position as an interviewer. I think it would be a delicious lucky last episode that we could do.
This was to be your final year as artistic director of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, which unfortunately became a corona-cancellation. What happens to your relationship with the festival now?
This is going to be my second and final [ACF]. It’s a real shame we can’t do it live but we are doing an online offering. There’s no way we could transfer three weeks of very physical, live events to the internet; that’s impossible. But because it’s the 20th anniversary of the festival we did want to mark it in some way. We are creating a specific cabaret offering with some of our 2020 artists, which will roll out across the festival dates on June 5 to 20.
Season eight of Julia Zemiro’s Home Delivery premieres on the ABC on May 20 at 8pm.
Details of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival’s online offerings will be announced on May 18 at facebook.com/adelaidecabaretfestival