Jacinda Ardern sparks ratings boost for The Project

Ten’s The Project last night scored its biggest audience since July, thanks to interviews with the NZ PM and “Egg Boy”.

New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern hugs Waleed Aly on The Project. Picture: Supplied

Network Ten’s talk show program The Project last night scored its biggest audience since July, thanks to its highly-promoted interviews with New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and William Connolly, the Melbourne teenager best known as “egg boy”.

Some 534,000 people across the country watched The Project from 6.30pm until 7pm on Monday, the highest audience since July 11 2018.

Last week, Waleed travelled to Christchurch and sat down with New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to find out how she and her country have been coping through its darkest days... #TheProjectTV pic.twitter.com/AwFcSZBTyu

— The Project (@theprojecttv) March 25, 2019

The second part of the hour-long show, which ran the interviews with Ms Ardern and Mr Connolly, attracted 813,000 viewers, the highest audience since July 30, according to Ten.

Mr Ardern told the show’s co-host Waleed Aly that she had not spent much time with her family, and that motherhood had changed with the way she has responded to the Christchurch terror attack. She also said wearing the hijab in the days after the Christchurch attack was not something she thought about, but was “so obvious that it would be the appropriate thing to do”.

William Connolly on The Project last night.

Mr Connolly, who has attracted national media attention following his egging of Queensland Senator Fraser Anning after he blamed Muslim immigration for the Christchurch terror attack that killed 50 people, played down the incident.

He told the show’s co-host Hamish Macdonald that he realises it was not the “right thing to do”, but he was not expecting Mr Anning, who threw two punches at the 17-year-old teenager, to react to being egged.

The Project’s 7pm edition was the third most-watched show among TV viewers under the age of 50 — the network’s target audience — across Australia’s five metropolitan cities, according to Ten, which cited figures from OzTam.

The most popular show was Nine’s reality dating show Married At First Sight with 752,000 viewers, with Seven’s My Kitchen Rules in second spot with 355,000 people tuning-in to watch the cooking competition program.