Who is Abbie Chatfield and why she’s set to be the new Ray Hadley
She’s the agony aunt to thousands of young Australians and a chronic oversharer who attracts just as many critics as she does media contracts.
Abbie Chatfield would have been just 17 when Girls was let loose by HBO.
Since then the groundbreaking, and later controversial, TV show written by (and for, according to some critics) Lena Dunham has been reinvigorated on TikTok by those too young to watch the series unfold in real time back in 2012.
The show, like its contemporary, Fleabag, by Phoebe Waller Bridge and predecessor Sex and The City, spoke to a generation of young women, helping them feel “seen”.
Girls gave rise to the whiny, overly confident, narcissist, crippled with self-consciousness “main character”. Enter Hannah Horvath. An aspiring writer who spends more time whingeing than working.
“I think that I may be the voice of my generation. Or at least a voice. Of a generation,” Horvath said.
Chatfield is in no way a Hannah Horvath; however, she has a few Horvath elements, mainly the self-conscious part, but her main attribute is being “the voice of a generation”.
The closest comparison, locally, would be legendary broadcaster Ray Hadley. If Hadley wore cut-out dresses and bared his midriff and personal dramas on air.
Chatfield is the new-age Hadley for the online, progressive generation. Both have incredible influence, immense talent and work ethics that would exhaust professional athletes and run rings around Phar Lap.
While Hadley calls sport and fires up talkback radio callers, therapy and delving into the psychology of human behaviour drives Chatfield. It’s a personal attribute she has parlayed into a career that has seen her become a magnet for fans, followers and media executives who have lined up to sign her on to their programs, projects and networks.
Chatfield was thrust into the spotlight when she was runner-up on The Bachelor Australia in 2019.
After filming the show, she went on to star in (and win) I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Outta Here Australia. She started her podcast, It’s a Lot, in March 2020, hosted Ten’s The Masked Singer, launched a fashion label and a beer, and moved into radio in 2022 with her own show, Hot Nights with Abbie Chatfield.
The show has been tweaked over recent months, slotting in new co-stars alongside her and changing up the format. Some critics say it’s a sign the formula isn’t working; however, there are persistent rumours she is being looked at to move into a coveted breakfast hosting role for Southern Cross Austereo’s flagship station, Sydney’s 2DayFM, which hasn’t had a ratings-winning combination since Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O moved to a rival network.
Hot Nights with Abbie has amassed more than 32,000 followers on Instagram and more than 36,000 on TikTok, and has rated well around the country, gaining ground and about 7000 more listeners across key metrics and markets such as Sydney and Melbourne – not bad for evening radio during footy season. Coincidentally, in the third ratings survey for the year, released on Tuesday, Hadley’s morning show in Sydney shed 7000 listeners. While her competitors were calling games and fronting music countdowns, Chatfield, in a bid to raise awareness about climate concerns, once powered her entire show by riding a stationary bike.
However, her ascension as an outspoken and opinionated “personality” also comes as another forthright presenter, David Koch, leaves the Sunrise desk and is replaced with the more sanguine Matt Shirvington. Chatfield is now one of the loudest colours on the Australian broadcast spectrum, which has been criticised for becoming beige in recent years.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, in 2023 at least, that a young woman with opinions and fans must be in want of fame. Right? Not so much with Chatfield. She has pride and wants to work to break down prejudice. About everything from gender stereotypes, sexuality, race and her recent ADHD diagnosis. Which she credits for being able to handle a professional dance card that would make a 1950s bachelor blanch.
“The biggest thing that people miss is the positives of ADHD. It allows me to hyper-fixate on topics like work, and it also allows me to do more than one thing at once. I’m able to handle all my jobs easily and enjoy them still because my brain is able to be in more than one place at one time,” she tells The Australian.
Chatfield is neurodivergent and so are her skills, interests and opinions – which is what also makes her a lightning rod for controversy.
On any given day she’ll go from interviewing renowned relationship psychotherapist Esther Perel about intimacy, to platforming new Australian music on Hot Nights, then posting a TikTok about how she left the ARIAs in tears. She’ll then follow it up by listening to a DJ’s new mix in real time, then post an Instagram Story detailing how she almost didn’t make her first Logies because of a lack of confidence.
“I just panicked, and also everyone just always calls me ‘attention-seeking’ and now I’m rocking up to the red carpet with a feather cape that’s four metres long,” Chatfield said. She pulled it together and spent the night posing for photos in her Con Ilio gown with former Spice Girl Mel B, Chatfield’s co-star on The Masked Singer.
As well as juggling TV, radio and podcasting, she’s also travelling the country on a speaking tour. The Trauma Dump live show has been selling out concert halls around the country and is her second stint on the national speaking circuit in two years. Her latest production does what it says on the tin – rakes over her love life and the “awful stories” so many women who date also have now.
Don’t mistake this “show boating” for a lack of self-awareness.
There is a reason her stock in the new-age media game continues to rise. She’s now hosting one of the most tongue-in-cheek reality TV productions on our screens. It’s another dating show (she knows her niche) called FBoy Island, now streaming on Binge to rave reviews, especially among the core demographic it’s targeting – young Australians. Pedestrian, an outlet and Instagram account dedicated to Australian pop culture, calls it “camp, silly, self-aware”.
The show tries to match-make three women with 24 men. Twelve are “nice guys”, the other 12 are “f..k boys”. The winner gets a cash prize.
The main narrative arc of the first episodes involves one of the “f..k boys” being misogynistic about a female contestant; what we see play out is the other men dealing with the situation and his rude remarks in what fans online are calling “amazing television”, as they watch these blokes navigate and conduct themselves as this “testosterone collective”.
Chatfield identifies as queer but dates men and has been in an open relationship. She is proud this series, in its third season in the US, has landed in Australia at a time gender issues are front of mind in Canberra and sparking conversations in the wider community. The pilot aired during the Sofronoff inquiry into how the ACT criminal justice system handled Brittany Higgins’ rape allegations.
“A show like this gives women a power in its entirety, and also gives them permission to speak up when something is even slightly wrong, without being called crazy,” she says. “The premise of the show is about encouraging people to look out for red flags. Women are not desperate. Not all men are monsters. It will be really, really great for women to watch and also for them to watch with their partners and they can both point out things that are playing out on screen, like ‘Hey, you know you do that, right?’. I hope the show is used as a medium to champion conversations about relationships.”
Chatfield copped criticism last year when it was announced she would be fronting FBoy Island. The loudest objectors were her Bachelor cast mates after she had responded to being “slut shamed” by a former contestant and Sandilands on radio about her reported flirtations with rapper Yung Gravy after he appeared on her podcast. Like most dramas these days, it played out online for days. She responded to being called a hypocrite by posting a selfie with the caption: “You can all roast me if you watch the full series and think it’s f..ked but don’t make weird assumptions off a show you haven’t seen and hasn’t even been created yet.”
Drama also happened with her clothing label, Verbose, which has been inundated with orders due to a new release. Chatfield hasn’t taken a backward step, despite confirming she is “very close to being burnt out”, and has taken to responding to complaints personally. Despite feeling overwhelmed, she is looking forward to the latter half of the year and getting more political. While some would avoid controversy and hot-button topics and issues such as the voice referendum and racism, Chatfield is committed to weighing in with her two cents’ worth even though she does understand her diverse interests and opinions will divide, and potentially confuse, people.
“It’s very hard because right now I’m so busy. I want to speak about the important political and social topics like I usually would, but it’s impossible for me to learn enough about these topics to speak on them correctly … I want my mainstream platform to help people be exposed to it. I live in kind of two worlds. I live in the left-wing niche like podcasting, I think that I’m quite progressive and … I post about things I really care about, but I also am in the mainstream media going on TV shows about dating, so it’s hard to kind of marry the two, and I get that,” she says.
One of those issues she wants to comprehend further is Stan Grant stepping down from his roles at the ABC, citing overwhelming abuse.
“It’s one of the things I’ve wanted to speak about, but I haven’t had the time to sit down and really look into what the f..k has been going on.
“Obviously it is something … very aligned to Australian ways of thinking, unfortunately. We are a racist country built on colonialism and the way that Stan Grant has been treated is horrific. I get told not to bite back, and I have a few friends who have been in media for 10 or 20 years, they tell me to not comment, but living with ADHD I have a huge issue with injustice, or perceived injustice, and perceived misunderstandings, so I always want to correct the narrative.”
Chatfield is juggling a lot and, despite not yet being 30, her raw talent and radical self-awareness may see her becoming what Hannah on Girls never could – the voice of her generation.
