Gina Liano: ‘Me? Humble? That’s a stupid thing to say’

“I’m probably not approachable and nor do I want to be,” says Barrister and former Real Housewives star Gina Liano, as she opens up about moving on from reality TV and embracing life as a single woman.

“I’m probably not approachable and nor do I want to be. That makes it harder,” says Liano of her happily single status.

Whether she’s staring down criminals in the courtroom or clashing with co-stars over cocktails, The Real Housewives Of Melbourne star Gina Liano has learnt how to keep her cool when things get heated. The unflappable criminal barrister with high hair, high style and an arsenal of withering one-liners became an instant TV star when RHOM debuted in 2014. Since then, she’s competed on Celebrity Apprentice Australia, released a memoir entitled Fearless and launched her own perfume line.

Looking back now, however, Liano admits that shooting the Foxtel reality series for four seasons took its toll. “It all got too much,” the 57-year-old says, choosing her words carefully. “It’s very soul destroying. I’ve had a lot of conversations with Lydia [Schiavello, her co-star and friend] about feeling quite traumatised at the end of it all because you’re constantly in trouble. You’re in constant conflict. And someone’s always trying to catch you out.

“You’re in constant conflict. And someone’s always trying to catch you out,” says Liano of her time on The Real Housewives.

“It feels like being a kid at school and waiting for the principal to call you into their office. You have that anxious, ‘What did I do wrong?’, shamed, humiliated and embarrassed feeling.”

The mother of two adult sons continued to prosecute cases even while filming Housewives, laughing that, as her fame grew, she started getting asked for selfies outside court. “Even the ones I was prosecuting would say [to their lawyers], ‘Tell her I still love her,’” she admits.

Her ability to navigate conflict with punchlines and panache will once again come to the fore on her new podcast series Judge Gina. A bit like the US series Judge Judy, Liano “settles the score between two parties – usually friends, like The Bachelor Australia stars Osher Günsberg and Matthew ‘Matty J’ Johnson – who have a beef,” she explains. “So it’s arbitration, really, but the decisions are legally binding.

“It’s a lot of fun, actually, but it’s interesting to see how people like to win,” she says, smiling as she struggles to restrain one of her dogs from taking on a far bigger pooch outside a cafe in Brighton, the seaside Melbourne suburb where Liano grew up and moved back to during the Covid pandemic.

Gina Liano appears inside this weekend’s edition of Stellar.

“When I finished Housewives, I felt like I needed some ‘me’ time that was very private,” she says of finding security in the familiar surrounds, and the contentedness in being single for the first time since she was 14. In fact, she insists she has no interest in online dating and jokes that, if she created a profile, “People would think it’s a bogus photo.”

She adds bluntly: “I’m probably not approachable and nor do I want to be. That makes it harder. I’m very happy with my dogs and my sons and living at home. I’m working very hard at the moment, I’m in court every day, so I’m probably in the happiest space I’ve ever been in.”

It wasn’t that way when she shot her final RHOM scenes in 2017. “My sister [fashion designer Teresa Liano] called me when we were filming in Mexico to say the treatment [for cancer] isn’t working,” she says, clarifying that Teresa has since been given a clean bill of health. “And my father had died only six weeks before. And I’d separated from Dean [Giannarelli, her partner], so I had to move house when I got back from Mexico. Then I went into hospital with anaphylaxis.”

Despite all the behind-the-scenes upheaval, Liano was gearing up to return to the series when Covid hit. By the time production finally got underway in 2021, Liano decided, instead, to focus on her legal practice. “I also thought that in the circumstances of Covid, where a lot of people are suffering, that the Housewives wasn’t a very sexy format,” she recalls. “I felt very humbled by what had happened.

Gina Liano with her sons Christos and Myles. Picture: Supplied

“I can’t say I’m a humble person; that would be a stupid thing to say. But I did feel humbled by how traumatic it was for so many people. I had friends whose husbands died… I thought, I don’t feel like putting on a pair of high heels and jewellery and glamming it up to go, ‘Look at me.’”

After watching some of the fifth season, Liano offers: “I think some of the humour was missing. I don’t know if that was because of Covid or whether the girls were taking themselves too seriously, or whether it was in the editing.

I mean, you can only work with what you’ve got.” She hastens to add that her critique isn’t intended as a slight on her old castmates since the hatchets between them have long since been buried. (In fact, Liano caught up with Schiavello, Janet Roach and Jackie Gillies in May. “We all just hugged each other and cried,” she says.)

While Liano isn’t keen to strap on her stilettos for the Housewives cameras again, she is open to working with her co-stars in some capacity. “Lydia and I have talked about possibilities,” she says. “It’s a bit disappointing that the entertainment industry in Melbourne is so limiting. I have hundreds of thousands of followers. I’m a household name, really. If you say ‘Gina’, most people know my name out of the series over anyone else’s, and no-one has really utilised that or come to me with an option [for a new TV format].” She concludes with an intriguing pitch: “I would like to do something where someone films me, on the couch, watching seasons of Housewives in real time.”

Judge Gina is available from tomorrow on the iHeart Podcast app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Read the full interview inside The Sunday Telegraph (NSW), Sunday Herald Sun (VIC), The Sunday Mail (QLD), and Sunday Mail (SA) this weekend.

Originally published as Gina Liano: ‘Me? Humble? That’s a stupid thing to say’