Samantha Armytage on leaving her marriage, what she really thinks about breakfast TV and her next chapter
Former Sunrise host Samantha Armytage explains what she really thinks about breakfast TV amid reports she is being considered for The Today Show.
Samantha Armytage discusses boundaries, baggage and the “perfect fit” new show that casts her as cupid – again.
Stellar: You’ve been away from our TV screens for a while but are coming back to host The Golden Bachelor. There’s a lot of excitement about this new series; how are you feeling about it?
Samantha Armytage: I’m really excited. I think everyone’s a bit excited about this show. It’s something completely new, with people who have lived a life. So it has real depth to it. And you don’t often say that about reality dating shows.
Stellar: Back on April 1, 2016, when I was in a previous role as an opinion editor, we published a story announcing that a new show was about to air called The Bachelor: The Senior Years. As we confirmed later that day, this “announcement” was of course an April Fool’s Day joke. And yet here we are, nine years later …
Samantha Armytage: What a prediction. And it made sense. It’s not like anything we’ve seen before. [The women] are in their 50s and 60s and Bear, the Golden Bachelor, is 61. This is a section of the community that has been ignored by television and society for way too long. We’re dealing with boomers here … These ladies were the wild girls of the ’60s and now they’re grown up. They’re in their power. They’re beautiful, accomplished, funny. They’ve raised children, some of them are enjoying being grandparents. They’re divorced or widowed. They didn’t know when they went into their marriages 20, 30 years ago how life would turn out, which none of us do. So they found themselves in this position, and they’re not ready to go out to pasture. They’ve still got so much living to do.
Listen to the full interview with Samantha Armytage on Something To Talk About:
Stellar: It’s also about visibility, isn’t it? Ten or 20 years ago, there was an assumption that you have a “happily ever after” or else you’re the “old maid”.
Samantha Armytage: Absolutely. And you know, as someone who’s turning 50 next year, there are no real conversations these days – like there were when you and I were younger journos – about not seeing women over 50 on television. That just doesn’t exist. We’re here and you need to deal with it. This is a group of people who are somewhat in their prime. They’ve got wonderful stories to tell. They’ve been through the ups and downs. They’ve experienced grief. They’ve had great joy. But they know what they want. They know what they won’t put up with. And as the host, [it’s] an opportunity to do what I think I do best, and that’s storytelling. So this is a really nice progression in my career, too.
Stellar: Let’s talk about Bear, Australia’s inaugural Golden Bachelor.
Samantha Armytage: Bear is a good man. He stood out to me from the start. He’s raised three boys, pretty much on his own. His wife died when the youngest was quite young. He’s been to rock bottom. He’s experienced one of the worst things anyone could go through in a marriage so he’s got this enormous understanding of emotion, which is good for a man. He knows grief, which I think is quite valuable as an adult – to have been to some low places. It makes you a better person.
Stellar: When you and Bear walked the red carpet at the Logies together a few months ago, the inevitable dating speculation began …
Samantha Armytage: I was surprised it took so long for people to start writing that kind of stuff, because there’s a lot of interest in my love life. As soon as I signed up to do this show, I thought, “Here we go.” But, no. I promise you, I have not been dating the Golden Bachelor. I would never do that to the ladies.
Stellar: One of those ladies is Abbie Chatfield’s mum, Laura. That’s a full-circle moment in the world of reality TV. [Abbie Chatfield starred in the seventh season of The Bachelor Australia in 2019.]
Samantha Armytage: Laura was wonderful. She’s a firecracker, like Abbie. If you put 20 women in a room, they’re all going to be different. This is what, as a woman, I’m proud of and I love about us as the fairer sex, the stronger sex … We come together and support each other. I saw these women on set do that. There was a real camaraderie. They were very caring and nurturing towards me [too]. This wonderful thing happens to women as you get older – as your oestrogen begins to decrease, your tolerance for bullshit begins to decrease, too. You get into this great cruising scenario where you think, This is me, take me or leave me; I don’t care anymore; I’m doing my thing. I’ve been through several things in the past couple of years that have shown me that life is short, so you’ve got to make the most of it and make sure you’re happy. And the people that don’t like you, you just have to keep away from them. To be part of this show – where these women were a bit older than me, they’d already trodden that path – it was a perfect fit. It could not have come at a better time in my life.
Listen to the full interview with Samantha Armytage on Something To Talk About:
Stellar: But you’ve always seemed like someone who has had pretty clear boundaries in putting up with BS.
Samantha Armytage: There are plenty of things in my life that, if I had my time again, I’d speak up about more loudly – times when I wasn’t strong about my boundaries, that I did things I didn’t agree with … I love that in your 40s, this power comes to you. You’ve got a lot less tolerance for nonsense. I’ve always been incredibly resilient and known my values. I was raised very well. But there have been
times when perhaps I’ve appeared more brave and tough than I really was. If anything, I’ve become more vulnerable and I lean into that because I don’t want to be tough going into older age. I want to keep my softness and femininity. It’s very important to me.
Stellar: Last year, you and Richard Lavender, your husband of four years, ended your marriage. Does the symmetry of being single coinciding with this new show feel like art is mirroring your own life?
Samantha Armytage: What I’ll say for my marriage [is] we gave it a go. It didn’t work out, so we moved on. Last year was a big year. There was a lot of change and a lot of grief, starting with the loss of my dog, Banjo. He was my baby, so that was an enormous grief. Then I had a total hip replacement and literally had to learn to walk again. I left my marriage, renovated a house from my hospital bed, changed TV networks, changed jobs. But I moved into 2025 in such a positive way. I feel this is my act two. I get another go here. Channel Nine saw that and offered me a great opportunity. So that’s perhaps art imitating life.
Stellar: Were there parts of these women’s experiences that resonated with you, particularly now that you’re single again?
Samantha Armytage: I don’t think anybody leaves a marriage without thinking it through quite deeply. You don’t just decide one day and leave the next. So there [were] a lot of elements in what the ladies were saying about the thought process and the grief of leaving and looking at your life and saying, “Where do I go from here?” We’ve all got these thoughts and fears and happy moments that we share. So there’s a lot that resonated with me, and I think will resonate with the women of Australia.
Stellar: Life does become more complex as you go on because you have more baggage, even if it’s good baggage, such as merged finances, property, stepchildren.
Samantha Armytage: There’s a lot more at stake. That’s the richness of the show. We’re dealing with people who have built their lives and are now trying to put their lives together. And you want that to work. There’s an enormous amount of optimism. These women are in their 50s and 60s, but the butterflies don’t stop. If you see a man you’ve got the hots for, you still get the feeling. I look in the mirror sometimes at the age of 49 and I think, How did this happen? In my head, I still think I’m 18. It turns out all women are going through that. I thought it was just me.
Last year, you left the Seven Network – where you’d worked for 21 years, and co-hosted breakfast show Sunrise with David Koch from 2013 to 2021 – and signed with Nine. Your first on-air role there was co-hosting the Today show, where you once again set the alarm clock for 3am while its regular hosts Karl Stefanovic and Sarah Abo were on leave over the summer. Was it weird to be sitting behind the desk of your former rival show?
It was a little weird. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t. The alarm didn’t bother me, because it was only a few weeks. It’s when it’s every day that it gets to you. It was a great experience. I think the network considered me a safe pair of hands that I knew what I was doing with a show like that.
But you don’t have any interest in taking it up for more than a couple of weeks?
I’m completely happy to stay in prime time, with the alarms going off at reasonable hours. Getting up all those years at 3am was really hard. It affects your social life badly. It’s hard on your body. I don’t necessarily miss that.
I had this conversation with my sister, who lives in London, the other day. She was talking about [the UK’s Prime Minister] Keir Starmer. And I said, “Georgie, I just can’t.” For the first time in 30 years, I think I’m actively avoiding the news. I find it too much at the moment. It’s just so depressing. I’ve removed myself. I’m choosy about what I watch and listen to; I always have been. It’s nice to step out of it at the moment – I think it always was exhausting but it’s really exhausting right now.
And it’s a different era. Trump as president has sped everything up. It’s a lot of adrenaline for journalists to keep up with. I take my hat off to them, because that’s exhausting. I’m quite happy to lie low and host a massive reality show.
Being back on air means interest in your personal life will no doubt rev up again. Do you feel like you’re as much of a headline target as you’ve always been?
I do get my fair share of attention, which didn’t sit well with me for a long time. That was part of the reason I stepped out of Sunrise and out of the limelight. It was too much. I’ve had a good break now. I can still go to the supermarket without any make-up on and lead a reasonably low-key life – I use [the supermarket] as the great indicator of society. People will stop me and say, “We miss you on Sunrise” or “We can’t wait for The Golden Bachelor.” I love that [they] still approach me and feel like they know me, which they did for all those years I was in their lounge room every morning. There’s a familiarity that comes from that, which you have to accept. We focus on the idiots on social media, the trolls. But most people are sweet, caring and lovely. I thought people might forget me, but it appears not.
When you hosted Farmer Wants A Wife in 2023-2024, you said women were constantly asking you to set them up with farmers. What do you anticipate people will ask you this time around?
They already are. Everyone is asking me to find them an older man. I’m like, “Whoa, stop. I’m worrying about me now.” Wherever I go in television, people stop me in the street and ask for my help to fix their lives.
Listen to the full interview with Samantha Armytage on Something To Talk About:
Samantha Armytage, matchmaker.
I’ve become Cupid.
It would be annoying for me to say, “The Golden Bachelor is about to air. What comes next?” But I’m an annoying journalist, so I will ask that question.
I’m open to what’s coming next. I try not to plan too much. And that has been totally the way for my whole career.
You mentioned turning 50. Now admittedly that milestone isn’t until September of next year, but given all that has happened in your life this past few years, how are you feeling as you look ahead to a new decade?
Any birthday that ends in a zero is a hard one to get through. This is the beauty of having all these miles on your tyres. You go through things that knock you around, losing a mother, the enormous grief of that [Armytage’s mother, Libby, died in 2020, after a long battle with an auto-immune disease], then having to learn how to mother yourself to a degree, even in your late 40s. You all of a sudden have to grow up and think, I’m an adult now, and I’ve got to deal with stuff. Personally, I feel very content. I’ve never been more fit, I’ve never been healthier. I feel really strong. And I’ve got my shit together. Life is good. And I think the next decade is only going to get better.
The Golden Bachelor premieres at 7.30pm on October 20 on Channel 9 and 9Now. See the full cover shoot with Samantha Armytage in Stellar today, via The Sunday Telegraph (NSW), Sunday Herald Sun (Victoria), The Sunday Mail (Queensland) and Sunday Mail (SA).
For more from Stellar and the podcast Something To Talk About, click here.
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Originally published as Samantha Armytage on leaving her marriage, what she really thinks about breakfast TV and her next chapter
