Tired, tired, tired, I said love, I said pet. I said I am not on standby to do voice levels. It's got to have a cigarette. I don't know how to do her without it.
She got the cigarette. Hi, I'm Mia Freedman, and welcome to No Filter, a podcast where there is no such thing as too much information. My guest today is an Australian icon. She's written some of our best comedy shows and created some of our favorite characters, including Pashrash netballer Sharon Strzelecki, a chain smoking Lynn from Fast Forward. But underneath the many faces and complete hilarity, Magda Szubanski is a woman who has struggled
with her identity for most of her life. For the 1st 51 years, Magda hid her sexuality entirely from the public eye. The more famous and successful she became as a comedian and as a writer, the harder she had to hide. She also had to deal with her father's secret history and through all of this, she used food as a coping mechanism.
Reckoning, her first book is a memoir that deals with the raw emotion of her life intertwined with her father's experience as a German resistance fighter in World War II. Magda has such an honest approach to everything she does, be it the characters she creates or the way she writes, which is brilliantly. Today I speak to her about what it was like making a decision to tell the world she was, as she said, gay, gay, gay, gay, a
little bit not gay, gay, gay, gay. Her very public time is the face of Jenny Craig and why she walked away from that very lucrative weight loss deal twice. After all, we're all reckoning with something. Girlfriend, you can
write. Oh thank you. Oh my God, thank you.
It was unput downable.
Oh wow, you're giving me goosebumps. a little teary
and just also I read it with a pencil and I was just, I kept circling and underlining just beautiful phrases. You've got a beautiful turn of phrase.
Oh thank you, thanks.
How did you do it?
Um, I don't know. I don't know. I just, um, I, I didn't know if I could do it actually when I first started writing, I didn't know if I could write. Uh, so it's been a huge journey. I started just after my dad died, um, and then it took all sorts of twists and turns. At one point it was going to be a book about my weight loss, although that was complicated by the fact that, of course, I put it all back on again.
So there went that idea. But I really, I, I just discovered through the writing of this book how much in love with language I am apart from all the other content stuff. And I suppose I've always played with language really with characters and I've loved writing the scripts that I've been involved with.
You wrote the three dog woman series,
yeah, and you know a lot of stuff, but to actually just have free reign to really it's a pretty serious book and I wanted the language to match the gravitas of the subject matter in a way, so.
Yeah. Did it, was it a different muscle to the one that you're used to using for obviously writing comedy, but just you're a creative person, you act, you're multi-talented in that way, but did writing feel like a creative muscle cause it feels like a very Different voice.
Well, it's the real me and in some ways it was, you know, writing sketch comedy is, I don't, you don't want to make it look like hard work, but it is incredibly freaking hard work because you're straining, well, for me, I was straining my brain away from the way it actually naturally works to put it into sketch comedy mode. It requires a certain adrenalized, um, you know, high octane energy comedy.
Whereas, pardon me, whereas this book flowed out of me much more because it really is the way I speak and the way I think and my sense of humor, it's much more the real me.
It reads like you just sat down and wrote it like in a week, which I always think is the most, I mean it's rarely that is that, but I always think that's it makes it very easy to read and very um. It doesn't read like it was agony, but you wrote it over 8 years, right?
Yeah, and it it wasn't agony, you know, a lot of it really did flow, you know, I understand what they talk about the Holy Spirit, you know, there's something that kind of rights through you and there's some um. You know, in some ways I think the book's smarter than I am. It's weird you access some part of your own brain that's connected to the collective unconscious or something.
There's some force that animates and flows through you. It's the same when you're doing comedy or anything creative, you have that sense of flow that they talk about and it's a strangely impersonal thing um and um you know, without getting too wanky about it. Let's get let's get. I'm capable of it, you know, I can go right to the wank place, um, but it really, uh, I loved writing. I absolutely, um, I said this at an event the other night and there was sort of an, oh, you know, it's the, this
is my favorite thing that I've ever done. I have to say. It's the most satisfying and complete thing because it's humor, but, but it's also the serious, it's it's the whole me, you know, much more.
It's also the only thing. Um, as a performer as you are, there are so many people involved in every aspect of what you do if you're doing a show, if you're doing whatever it happens to be, but this is just
you. Yeah, yeah, I can't hide the scrum at all.
But also you don't have the endless frustrations that you have when you're making film and TV about the budget, the location, the costumes, all those, you know, dealing with reality things, whereas with a book you can really, um, although I was constrained because this is a real story and I was I had to adhere to the truth of that, but you can kind of go wherever you want to go with that, and there's no budget, you know, if I wanted to go and write about Warsaw in 1943, I could,
you know, and I didn't have to worry about whether the The film had the budget for that, you know, the book can do that. So that was incredibly liberating. Yeah,
it's called Reckoning, and it's about you coming to terms with so many things, but it's a book fundamentally about identity, isn't it? Yeah,
yeah, it is actually. It very much is, which mine and mine still isn't fully formed, I would say.
I wanted to, it's gonna sound funny, but I wanted to say thank you on behalf of Jewish people because I am the official spokesperson of all Jewish people. No, but I am Jewish and I lost relatives in the Holocaust and and Your father was the most extraordinary hero, and he and his family in Poland risked their lives for a long time sheltering Jewish people and one little boy in particular because the price of doing that was their own death,
if they'd been caught and as I describe in the book, my grandparents were 45 when the war started, and that's not young, you know, you know consequences. My father was 15 and there's a certain Um, you're reckless youth, you don't understand mortality, all those
kind of things. So I'm really in awe of my grandparents' courage, particularly somehow my grandmother really and my aunt, um, you know, because she had the little Jewish boy used to sleep in her bed, you know, I mean, I mean what would have happened to them if they'd been caught, um, just doesn't even bear thinking about and to well they would have been killed and they knew that they most likely would have been tortured because of the unit that my father and my uncle were in.
Because my father and my uncle were in this unit 993W, which was a top secret counterintelligence unit, and basically they were executing Polish collaborators who were telling the Gestapo um secrets of the resistance, but also telling the Gestapo where where Jewish people were hiding. And the Polish, you know, official line on that, they took a very hard line on collaboration and
it was an incredibly, I mean, not just brave but moral thing that they did,
they were good people, good people
didn't turn away.
No, no, they didn't, and you know. I asked myself what would I have done in the same circumstance, and you just don't know, you know. But I asked my cousin who's also called Magda, Magda Magda, very glamorous Polish actress, funnily enough, um, but I, I wanted to understand it was almost like doing a taxonomy of courage, you know, in some ways to try and understand where did that courage come from, what informed it, and how did they maintain that over six long years?
And I said to her one time, you know, where did our grandmother's courage come from? And she just said, breeding.
You know, meaning basically that they were brought up to have those values and they were trained in that way so that essentially when the time came, because they were from that kind of stream of Polish, you know, Poland's a very complex country and its history with Jewish people is enormously complex as I'm sure you know, but they were from that stream that was very kind of multicultural. They had a lot of Jewish friends and to them, as my cousin said, these weren't.
Jewish people they were Polish people. They saw no difference, you know, and that's, you know, those sort of that way of conducting yourself in the world is as relevant, if not more relevant now than ever really.
It's interesting, you know, part of what you write about is the sense that traumatic life experiences can be inherited sort of through DNA in the same way as blue eyes or blonde hair. And there's a very strong understanding of that among Jewish people, this sense of survivor guilt and the effects of the Holocaust as it's come down into generations who never experienced it, but who are profoundly affected.
And the same thing happened with you. You felt that's one of the things you experienced or you explored in the book.
Well, I think, I think really there's a kind of I'm reminded of that amazing episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm with the little gay, he looks like a gay boy you know he's talking about the Holocaust.
He says, get over it, Jews, you know, and there's that kind of an attitude sometimes that I, I suppose because of my proximity to it, I look at Jewish people and the suffering that they've gone through and, and think about the toll that that must take and often allowance isn't made for that, um, like how, how that would.
Existentially affect you, you know, generations, generations and I met this young Polish Jewish woman actually at a function and she was saying her grandmother hated Polish people, you know, she'd had bad experiences.
And she was really surprised and relieved to hear about my grandparents, and, and I thought it was really important and an important thing for the book too, for Jewish people to know that there were Polish people that cared and that risked their lives and for, for in order, and the reason for saying that is so that Jewish people don't feel so alone, you know, because I think that's a horrible feeling to feel like no one cared. It's like people did and it might not have always been evident.
But there were people that did. I think that's a really important message to get across
and the sense that it's not ancient history,
it's within living memory and I do think it's passed
on somehow genetically. I mean there's all those studies they're doing now, epigenetics they've done actually with Jewish second generation Holocaust survivors and And they've shown that the effects of trauma and stress are communicated and when you say that to people, everyone just goes, yeah, totally get it, you know, no one goes, no, no, I don't reckon, although I have other friends who are Jewish Holocaust survivors, second generation, and they don't want that
to be true because they don't want to be burdened with that. They want to be able to live outside and beyond it, you know, but you know we're all reckoning with something,
aren't we was an extraordinary man, an extraordinary man. I wanted to take you to a scene in the book that I really love, there's so many, but, um, one, when you're playing soccer on the beach with a group of friends on a camping trip. yeah, can you just talk about about that? I loved that scene.
Oh yeah, I love that too. Um, I, this is after I'd lost all the weight when I did Jenny Craig and um, you know, there's one thing that I sort of grieve the loss of is physical mobility, and I don't run. It's just too hard when you're overweight, you know. But when you're not overweight, true, true, true, um, and, um, I went with a bunch of girlfriends. There's a huge sort of posse of us who go camping every now and then, and we went to Cape Levec and it
was so beautiful. We were in the really rough campy part of it, you know, where it's like Gilligan's Island and there's this incredible stark beauty as I described it in the book, if they had, you know, beach resorts on the moon or Mars, that's what, that, that would be Cape Levec.
Um, and, um, we were, we were all down on the rocks that sort of on the cliff, and the moon came out and it just illuminated the beach like this ghostly soccer arena, and we all spontaneously ran down onto the beach and started kicking a soccer ball around and I was, because I was the lightest I'd been for a very long time and I was sprinting around and elbowing people and getting the ball and Laughing so hard I wet myself and it was the most incredible feeling and but there was also, it was
tinged with a slight sadness because I didn't know if it would last and then it didn't, you know, I put the weight back on, so I had this sort of glimpse of it, but, you know, to be honest, I haven't given up on the idea of um I mean, I'm in this perpetual bloody thing of, you know, should I just accept my weight as it is, or should I keep trying to lose weight, but
You don't look overweight to me.
Thanks,
you actually don't. Oh well,
you know, look, I am carrying
you in person, but I don't
like look, I'm naturally my natural instinct is to be a camping outdoorsy girl, and I'm carrying a little bit too much weight to do that. So so just to get to that sort of weight there is, you know, would be really comfortable, but that's You know, outside of all of the body image craziness of the, you know, I mean, we're so nuts about it, all of us, and, and I'm involved in that. It's hard to be a woman and be sane, I think about your body and what you put into it.
The 3, the 3, you know, the book's called Reckoning and the 3 issues that you reckon with throughout the book that weave in and out are your father and his history, your sexuality, and your weight and they sort of provide this framework for a whole bunch of other stuff. Um, do you feel like they're intertwined, those three things, or at least sexuality and your weight? Good
question. Yeah, I think they are. I think they are. Well, my father sort of started on at me. His mother was overweight and he was overweight when he was a kid, and then he was in the POW camp and lost the weight and was very handsome, um, and so Jenny Craig. It was totally, but he managed to hang on to it. He had an iron will, my father.
Um, and from the age of 11, he said to me, when I put on, like, clearly I was just pubescent, and I'd put on a tiny bit of weight and he said if you just lose half a stone, you'll be fine for the purposes of playing tennis because he was tennis mad.
And his way of doing that is to just not eat willpower,
starve yourself, which is how he managed it and somehow he did um but it just propelled me into this absolute craziness, you know, it messed with my metabolism. I mean, God bless him, he was trying to do the right thing. Um, he had all sorts of complex stuff going on about, you know,
about, I mean someone who's been starved and been in a prison camp, you know, their issues around weight must be manifest, yeah,
but also, you know, his mother was overweight and You know, there was things have started to change in the last maybe 10 years, but for a long time overweight people were the last most vilified group, you know, I think still, still, I think, yeah, yeah, absolutely there's a lot of shame attached to it. It's, you know, I seem to have picked all the ways of being in the world that have shame attached. Um, and, uh, slowly I'm just working my way through it and going, you know what, I, I, I ain't
gonna be shamed no more. Um, so whether or not the weight is a metaphor, um, uh, I read, I read that fantastic book, Fat is a Feminist Issue years ago by Susie Orbach, um, and then the, the sort of opposite side of that was reading Susan Sontag when she wrote about, um, uh, AIDS as metaphor and illness as metaphor, and, and, and she disputed the idea of the body being a metaphor for what's going on emotionally. Um, and where did you land?
I think it's halfway between, like everything, you know, it's the middle path. I think it is both a metaphor and an emotional expression, and it's also just purely, you know, in some regards just physiological and genetic.
You talked about, you described it as a flesh armor that you created around yourself at a time when you were struggling with your sexuality, which is kind of for decades really, um. I wanted to ask you about, so, so the decision to do Jenny Craig, talk me through that because you write about that in the book. You don't write about it much, so it's not a huge part of the book, but the actual decision to do Jenny Craig must have been a huge one because by doing that you take
your weight and you make it currency, for better or worse. Yeah. Did you realize what a big decision that was going to be?
Probably not fully.
How could you?
I know it's the same with this book. What have I done in some regards, um, but, um, I had gotten to a point physically and health wise where I had to do something. I had shocking sleep apnea. My friends were worried. My friends were worried, and another friend who was doing the advertising for Jenny Craig approached me and said, look, they'd be interested. Would you be interested? And I said no. And then a year later I
thought maybe it's a good way to do it. There's a financial incentive, there's a sort of a contract, you, you've got a structure around you publicly accountable in a way accountable, but you've also got public support and I knew that because of being a public person. The public is so and the media are so obsessed with weight loss and weight gain. I knew no matter what way I did it, it would be a public issue anyway, so I kind of thought, why not just
tackle it head on. um and um so really that was how the, how the whole thing went and, and, um, um, I sort of wanted to in some ways say some, I thought it was also a platform to say some things about body image and the shaming of overweight people and The fact that I was very clear about the fact that I had no intention of getting skinny, but I needed to lose some weight. Um, but sometimes you know it's very hard to get a complex message through.
But you were also honest in terms of, you know, you did interviews with the Women's Weekly and you talked about how there was also therapy was required and how it wasn't just, I'm just gonna eat a few meals and magically the weight will fall off like you were very open and honest about it.
Yeah, yeah, I was and um thanks for picking up on that because I was really conscientious about that. And certainly, you know, I've done a ton of therapy in my life, you know, I think everyone should do it isn't the best thing
I don't know how anyone can get through life without doing it.
Well, you see people and they don't struggle. I don't see why you wouldn't avail yourself of the skills and the tools if there's a smarter way to do something.
You don't do your own dental work. I don't fix my own car. Maybe some people can, but no, I see it in the same way.
To me too, me too, but yeah, I very much wanted to get across. I think there is, there are really complex emotional psychological things that go on with weight. The whole thing, I actually think no one really understands it, you know, it still eludes them.
Unscramble the egg between society's expectations and our history and our parents and the messages we receive and the messages we internalize, it is hard to unscramble all that. But you did lose all this weight and you talk about how at the age of 50 when most women are becoming invisible, you were swimming upstream because suddenly you're in a black tight black dress, you're on the cover of Women's Weekly, men and women were flirting with you.
What was that like? Was that the first time you'd experienced being valued for how you look in a positive way?
Yeah, yeah, because I put weight on um in my early teens and I sort of, you know, I sort of felt that I could hide. In that in a sense, um, but this was the first time, you know, I'd always been the funny one, but suddenly I was like the hot one and I, I was amazed that people I know I was sort of really taken aback, but people kept kept kind of saying that and I was like, well, I suppose so, right, then I'll go with that.
And it was, it was a really extraordinary experience and it quite unnerved me in some ways and there's this whole sort of myth that you lose weight and then all your problems, you know, and everyone knows it's not like that, you know what I think it's like that. I know they do and they want to keep thinking it's like that
you think that it would be like that in some way,
probably a little bit. You just get won over by that stuff, don't you? Um, and you know, certainly a lot of, you know, pains and aches and things like that were solved by losing weight and health issues, certainly. Um, but you know, you've got then a whole lot of other set of issues to address and as I describe in the book, suddenly I became really self-conscious about the way I looked and I felt like a bauble, you know, and I get now how, um, I'd always felt that side of that.
I was always a sort of nerdy one, you know, and I didn't ever use that as currency and suddenly I Got how other women felt for the first time, I think, really.
And because the the double side of that is that you get it, but then you know you can lose it because we're all going to lose it, whether it's weight or getting older or going gray, whatever it happens to be, you can't stay hot forever, although society tells us we should try.
Yeah,
but you said something really interesting because you said the sexiness of fat is like a dirty little secret. And so it's not like you hadn't experienced people being attracted to you and experience what it was like to feel sexually desirable, but this was, it was it was like what did you mean by that?
Well, that really a lot of people won't admit to feeling attracted to fat women. You know, especially men, there's a, you know, that whole weird. There's the feeder thing and then there's those college frat boys that sort of, you know, do all the things about fat girls won't screw a fat girl, that kind
of thing. No, there's whole fat shaming things that go on about that, but Um, you know, this is one thing that the internet has done for us and porn is it reveals that people have all sorts of sexual that are not we constantly have shoved down our throat that there's one type of desirable body, Miranda Miranda Kerr, and it turns out that actually people are attracted to all sorts of things. Well, we didn't for a long time, I don't think you know
how did that change? Like, were people just more open about it?
Well, um,
when you lost the weight,
yeah, and I mean I was still, I was still what would be classified as overweight, but I think maybe because I was just packaged in a different way or something, um, uh, thanks to the stylists, um, yeah, people were really engaging with me in that way and I was like, wow,
this is a weird thing to sort of participate in your own objectification and have it as something you haven't sort of, that's something quite sudden.
Yeah, it was, it was very weird. Suddenly I was the object of the gaze, you know, and I really felt that somehow I'd existed outside of that. I had, yeah, I really had, and suddenly I went, oh my God
and you'd been for other things, how you were, what you could say, what you could do, your talent, and then suddenly it's like, oh she's hot bauble
yeah
bauble. So it's like the plus and minus of that. And then of course then people started stalking you and paparazzi and Let's get Magda eating and let's get Mag in a swimsuit. That must have been horrendous.
It goes through a cycle. What happens is initially it's absolutely horrific and you feel like hunted prey, you know, because the way they follow you is like you're an animal of prey. It's, it's really awful. It's like having wolves coming after you, um, and, and it's, I think the lizard part of your brain just responds to it like that, you know, um.
But then after a while, after they've done the worst they can do and shown you shoving food into your face and you know, the most unattractive and all of that, you know, you and your bathers at the beach and all that sort of stuff.
In another way, and I'm not saying that the paparazzi are providing a public service, but in another way you come through the other end of it sort of liberated because you just go, well, what are you going to do, you know, yeah, I, you know, yes, I go down the street looking wind blown with no makeup on and my track pants on.
Um, there was a real gotcha about it though, wasn't it? It was not done
in a, you know, glory in my sort of, you know, they didn't go too far because there is a certain affection that the Australian public have for me and so they were a bit careful.
You've always been number one on Q scores. I remember for many, many, many. Years like just the top of the tree with scores. So yeah, there has been a huge affection, so they knew, but then they they use weasel words like enjoying her curves and those kind of things where it's so passive aggressive.
I know. Well, it's schizophrenic, you know, enjoying her new beach body when they when they try and get the worst possible shot of you, you know.
You knew though when you signed on to Jennet, did you know, listen to me putting words into your mouth, that how do you then turn that off? It's like once you put that ball into play. How do you then go, OK guys, I'm resigning for from talking about weight in every interview and da da da. Now I've done Jenny Craig, I've done 2 years, whatever. Now how do I, you know, drawing a line under it.
I don't think you can ever put the toothpaste back in the tube, and I don't think I quite, I didn't know it was going to go off the way it did. I didn't know it would be as huge as it was, um, you know, that said, I went into it with open eyes and and maybe some naivety thinking. I think I thought I could maybe control. Um, the, the debate a bit more and try and bring some common sense into it and then you just realize it's a mad beast there's nothing you can do. There's nothing you can do.
Do you think the fact that you came out in 2012 when you lost the weight, do you think that that was
Well then I started to put the weight on again I
think didn't you say after you came out you put the weight back
I think I felt intensely vulnerable and certainly, you know, that idea of fat is metaphor, you know, it is sort of a bit like a shield, a bit like armor. And um you know, whether it was just that or whether it was just that's what happens, you know, very few people like the the statistics for people who lose weight and keep it off are diabolical. It's like about 3% I've since discovered. So it's, you know, the chances of keeping it off, it's very hard, um.
But I think um um really, you know, that whole thing of coming out was a really interesting um. What happened initially after it, there's a whole other myth too about like losing weight like everything's going to be perfect
so interesting to read. I thought, oh, you've come out now. It's like you'll run down the street I was shit scared because
you know, and this is where that sort of Polish European legacy adheres because I grew up with this intimate knowledge of that the world can take a very dark turn and there's always, it's just in me to have that slight mistrust of the mob, you know, and the way things go, which is weird because I've made in some ways I've gone straight into that fear but my whole career is about
dealing with masses of people. But at the same time I have this thing of, you know, looking at, you know, seeing those pictures of the Holocaust with my father sitting in the lounge room and going this is how horribly wrong it can go. And that's always been part of my operating system. That's
how I'm hardwired. um, and so, you know, much as I could reason with it, there was that primitive part of me that when I came out was terrified that it would backfire somehow horribly and it must have looked to people, um, you know, watching on the sidelines like it was 2012, you know, lots of people would try and say everyone knew, everyone didn't know, a sliver of people who live on the, you know, the east coast and in the arty farty world knew.
But the broader population really didn't have a clue that I was gay, so it was a big thing to still um and um the other thing is. You know, I can't really name very many other A-list female celebrities who are out. So I was a bit out there on my own and it's, it's still not happening. I mean, where are they, you know, um, so this idea that people sort of want to rewrite history in some ways and go, oh, it wasn't such a big
deal and everyone knew anyway and blah blah bla. It's like no, that's not really true, you know, and I was blazing a path in some ways in that. There was all this speculation about how it would affect brand Magda, whether I'd still get endorsements or not.
You talked about long conversations with your agents before like I spoke to my parents, I spoke and I spoke to my agents, and I thought, yeah, Magda, what
was that's
how do you talk about that like how do you
I
just how did that factor in.
Well, I just had to, um, really, um, acknowledge that it could affect my livelihood. I might not get endorsements. um, uh, and, um, I just had to do it anyway because it was time, it was the right time for me. And I'm very big on that, that, um, I don't, I don't, I don't think that, I don't think anything is all good or bad. Things are complex and Um, coming out, you know, this idea that you come out and it's all great, it isn't that way for everyone.
It's complex. It depends on your circumstances. It's not always safe. It depends on your own history, where you live, all that sort of thing. And you have to, you can't just go, yay, come out and it'll be great. As it turns out for me, it was one of the most empowering and healing things I've done, and in some ways it healed that old Eastern European wound. Because nothing terrible did happen and that part of me, I bet you get that part, don't you, that you know that
we've been waiting for the other shoe to dry up your whole life totally and it
didn't, you know, and that in itself was an incredibly healing thing for me.
It's very hard, you talk about you're the last of the generation that are walking wounded in terms of um people who grew up realizing they were gay before probably the 90s. So it was legal. It's exactly, it's really hard when you're talking to Jen I imagine to explain, oh yeah, everyone's out and Miley Cyrus, you know, and gender fluidity and Caitlyn Jenner on the cover of Vanity Fair.
What do you mean you were worried about it like how just talk like I loved what you talk about your um Coming to terms with your sexuality and when you were a kid and a teenager and an adolescent and and how you know, first you noticed you had special feelings for Marsha Brady and then you watched old movies and, and with, you know, you didn't identify with Vivien Leigh and Grace Kelly, you, you identified with the male leads and that you wanted to sweep them off their feet.
I loved that idea of coming to terms with your sexuality through popular culture because there were no Role models in the media. No,
I'd never seen another lesbian, so there was no one who I could, um, how was I even supposed to know what these feelings were or understand them? I'd kind of heard the word didn't and started to much though not much and started to realize with mounting horror that that was what I was. So all I had was these feelings towards other women. But I had never seen a lesbian, you know, as far as I knew, I was the only one, you know, it was terrifying and that sort of isolation.
Uh, it's, it's interesting as people are reading the book, so many people of my generation come up to me and go, oh my God, I went through that. There are some women of my generation who still don't feel comfortable with the word lesbian, you know, it's really a lot of damage was done to us and as I say, you know, you don't go from the discourse of shame to the discourse of pride with nothing but a parade
to get you through. That damage is done and then psychological work needs to be done to do the healing.
I love the scene in your book where you come out to your parents, God, it's funny. I laughed and I cried in the space of two pages. It was so funny. Um, they're
gorgeous,
they're adorable and like your mom, you say that she's the funny one in the family, you just, oh, I just can hear her voice even though I've never actually heard it just from your writing. Um, and you sort of you thought you were going to be outed by a magazine by an interview that you've done, um, when someone had alluded to rumors and I thought it showed such, um, incredible conviction that you just got up and walked out of that interview, um, none of that, oh please like me and da da da.
I was just like, you know, here's my boundary. And I'm walking out.
I was surprised I found that actually. I didn't think that would be how I would react, and I just did. I always knew because you know, early on and I described this in the book, I was when I was at uni, I was a little radical lesbian feminist. I found my gang. I was working in a women's refuge.
You ticked every cliche. I really did.
I know, I know. I was so happy. I was like that, yeah, I was that cliche. Every lesbian goes through, nearly every lesbian goes through some point when they shave their head. We all, it's just a rite of passage. You kind of have to do it, um, and, um, but then I did find that too constraining and I didn't want to be marginalized and ghettoized, and I knew, I started to realize I wanted to be a performer.
And I knew that I wanted to work on a large stage, you know, I wasn't one of those people that wanted to play to 200 lesbians in a tent somewhere, and I've got plenty of friends who do that, and they do amazing work, but they feel that frustration that they can't break through into the mainstream. So I can't remember we were going with the question
so you worked in the refuge and everything and it was about the process of deciding to come out to your parents.
Oh yeah, yeah, so so I'd kind of come to terms with my lesbian identity and then when I started doing degeneration. And it was a very straight world, lovely people, but you know, as I describe it, compared to the polymorphously perverse people I'd been with at was like moving in with the Waltons. So, um yeah, so it was, um, uh, I, I had gone through this whole process of going in
and out of the closet, as it were. Like I was quite out when I was at uni and then I sort of retracted and then, um, had this interview and um. Um, and I'd always, I always knew that no matter what, I wouldn't lie, that I would never ever lie or put up a front or pretend to be straight, but I wasn't sure what I would do when I was flat out asked, and this woman said to me, you know, so there are rumors, and one of them is that
you're a homosexual. How do you feel about that? And this extraordinary enfoie came over me and I just said, I don't care. And I was amazed. I was like, honestly, I was like James Dean. I was just so cool. It's the only time in my life I've been cool, but I have to leave. Yeah, but I've got to go now, and I just whacked up a huge boundary and went, you know, deal with that sucker, and, um, uh, and left.
But then went and had a meltdown and decided you had to tell your parents and your brother was there. It's the most fabulous scene. Just just talk us through it.
Oh, so I went, my brother at that time was a rides motorbikes. His cars and motorbikes are his thing, and he had a beard like Zizi top down to his his navel and a big Harley belt buckle. And gorgeous and a plait, you know, his hair plaited and I told him, and he was like, Yeah, all right, you know, whatever. I told him ages ago like years ago, but I told him I was going to tell Mom and dad, and he said if they attack you, I'll
come with you. I said, will you come there and be an example of someone in the family who's OK about it and just sort of show them the way
he said a really interesting. thing to you, he said if they because you're famous by that stage, and he said if they're going to wear you as a sparkly coat to impress their friends or something like that, then they also have to, you know, not that this is bad, but they have to accept every part of you.
Yeah, that's right. I know it was beautiful. What a great big brother and um so he came along and he was sitting at the breakfast bar and it was a Sunday night. Um, my parents, my parents live in Boronia, which is like 30 km out of Melbourne and um. And my mom. Said, 000, this is a, this is an unusual time to visit. And I said, um, um, well, I'd like to talk about something actually because can we turn the television off, I want to talk about something. She went, Oh, yes,
we'd love to chat. She had no idea what she was in for. And so we turned the TV off and, um, then she said, so what do you want to talk about? And I said, um, well, I suppose we should talk about the fact that, you know, I'm in my early 30s and there's never really been mention of a boyfriend.
She went, Oh, uh-huh, and Dad just sort of was, you know, and it just all went from there and she kept asking questions and dad was put up his hands defensively and wanted to know but didn't want to know, and, you know, but in the end they were absolutely gorgeous about it.
Yeah she said things like, oh, there's a lot of you around
now. Yeah she said, she said, um, she said, oh, there's an awful lot of you around. Oh, I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude, that's not rude, is it? You know, she's so cute. And, and she kept leaning going, I'd say we're talking about my sexuality and she go, uh, which is.
And you didn't want to use the word lesbian.
No, I thought that would have been too confronting. Yeah, yeah, and the
project you didn't want to.
Uh, let me just define my terms here. Um, I identify as gay myself. Now, um, when I say that, what I'm saying is that I am absolutely not straight. I wouldn't define myself as bisexual either. I would say I am like gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, a little bit not gay, gay, gay, gay gay. No, well, also because my sexuality is a little bit complicated. I'm not a hungji, you know, 100% yeah well there's
a lot of us who are like that. There you know there's the Kinsey scale of the 1 to 6, those who are completely heterosexual and those who are completely gay, and I'm somewhere, you know, pretty far up the gay end but not totally.
There's a bit of a stampede into that section, isn't really like everyone wants to like fall over each other now, which is Hilarious probably for for your generation and my generation who would have grown up hiding it. Now everyone's like, you know, I'm just a bit fluid and I'm not gay, I'm just having a relationship with a woman, you know,
I hear that Stewart's very strong on that line,
and now they're not even just gay, they're gender fluid, so maybe I'm not even a woman Cyrus. I could be also sometimes a
boy I think um I think Ruby Rose takes that line a little bit too,
so it's kind of like um. You know, being a boring old lesbian is just really conservative in a way it is.
Well, yeah, I know exactly, but that was why in some ways it was easier for me to come out in 2012 because that conversation was around. Had I come out earlier, I would have been absolutely labeled as a lesbian. I would have had to, you know, even some. who were advising me were saying don't go there, don't complicate it, just say you're gay. You don't want to because what's her name, the redhead from Sex and the
City's got into all sorts
of exactly she really did and so someone was advising me saying don't go there, you'll get a shit storm come down on you, and I was like, and I felt so backfooted. Then and I was like, no, the whole point of coming out is so I can be my real self, and that's you put yourself into a different box that exactly, exactly, and that was when I came up with the gay ga gay little bit which I just thought a fabulous.
Oh thanks, and it just expresses who I am, what my experience has been like, and it was funny, you know, and not too serious about it. And
were you nervous that night?
Yeah, I was. I was really nervous, yeah, because I felt I knew that there were very, that I was probably the first one of the first A-list celebrities who had who's been in, you know, a household name who had this opportunity to speak on behalf of so many millions of Australians. And that most of most of the LGBTQI people never get that opportunity to express what it's like, what it feels like, and what we're up against, and to try
and advance the cause of marriage equality. So I felt a huge responsibility because I didn't want to just come out, it wasn't just a question of coming out for myself. It was I really wanted to be a part
of that and that's why you chose that time. I wanted to read the statement that Um, you came out with, you said we pay taxes, fight wars for this country, nurse you when you are sick, make you laugh, sing and dance for you, play netball for you, star in your movies, cook your meals, decorate your store windows, and chances are gay people designed whatever it is you're wearing. All Australians, including gay Australians should have exactly the same rights, including the right to love, marry,
and take care of our partners. So, How did you write that? How did you come up with that statement and what was behind it for you?
Um, well, I kind of wanted to, you know, ease into it the whole thing and, and kind of get people's attention because, um, you know, there's no point if you're doing something like that for a cause, you, you, you want people to be listening, otherwise fall on deaf ears and there's no use. So, um, we had this whole kind of strategy going and it was sort of hilarious. It was like the war room, you know, there
was Alex Greenwich from Marriage equality, Karen Phelps and Jackie and Jackie Stoker
Phelps, um, and another friend of mine, Jo Jarvis, who helped out as well, she was fantastic
and you were saying Karen's Karen had been encouraging you to come out for a long time. Yeah,
she had because she knew. Um, like their journey was pretty rocky. Like they were out and they had a hard time really were, but she also knew how amazing it feels afterwards. So
she wanted you to come out not for the sake of the movement but for you,
yeah, yeah, she wanted me to feel the freedom that she and Jackie felt, which was, you know, so lovely of her. She's a great friend, good, good woman, really good woman. Um, and, um, so we had, we, you know, we'd
have these hilarious meetings. It was so fun, you know, planning it war room and talking about what I'd say, and, and then I just really had to find my own language around it and, and feel as comfortable with it and own it myself, um, because if I'm, if I feel I'm parroting, um, someone else's agenda or a cause, even though I was speaking on behalf of the cause, I, I, I don't do that very well, um. Yeah, I have to really feel it.
And you um you talked about when you lost the weight you were worried that you know people put all their own baggage onto it and it's like you don't lose too much, you still want to be funny and you suddenly started to wonder if you'd still be able to, as you put it so beautifully, feel the vibration of Sharon who you were playing at that time in Kath and Kim. And did it make you feel different in terms of of your comedy? Yeah,
it did. It actually really did because um it's not that I'm saying that you you um you have to be unattractive to be funny. I'm not playing into that thing. There are lots of beautiful women who are hilarious, but my shtick was very much around a particular physical shape in the same way that John Cleese has that stick insect body and he makes, that's his shtick. Being overweight and using my body in a particular way was part of really how I, that was a big part of what my comedy persona was.
And so, um, and you know, do you remember, um, the Mary Tyler Moore Show and her friend Rhonda lost all the weight and just it all went shit, you know, there were things like that where it was just like, you know,
male comedians, same thing, yeah,
yeah, it, it's, it's actually not an easy thing. To negotiate. People do see you in a different way. They take you, they take you a little bit more seriously. Even, even when you're, you know, not, um, trying to be serious, it just shifts everything. It really does shift the vibration quite significantly. um, so. You know that thing of, you know, even with this book, it's interesting that some people just really want it to
be about Sharon Strzelecki. They don't want to know about the darker side of things, even though once they read the book they love it, but before they come to it, they they have a perception of me that they really want to maintain.
But how much control did you have over the cover? It's one of my, I just love it. It's just so unadorned and not like
it ain't a celebrity photos.
No, I love it and it's everything about the book,
right? Oh well, funnily enough, I didn't want my picture to be. I would have loved to have loved that. That was never going to happen. Little did I know. I was thinking, yeah, they're going to let me do that should be on the cover. I wanted to have just like a white cover with my name and, but they, they, they just said no, that doesn't work for us. Um, but, um, um, yeah, I really very much wanted to not have a celebrity, it's not a celebrity memoir, and I wanted it to
register as that. And, and as I said before, this book, it's really the real me, you know, and, um, you know, at the age of 54, if you can't be the real you, when can you be really.
Congratulations, Magda, it's an absolute triumph. Thank you. It's just, it's beautiful, it's funny, it's moving, it's gripping, um, and, uh, yeah, I'm just so thrilled for you that you've been able to um produce such an extraordinary thing because writing is
hard,
is can be hard and you've just made it seem so effortless and you are just. An inspiration.
Oh, thank you. Well, you too, you too. Thank you.
Congrats.
Thank you.
Thanks for listening to No Filter. Subscribe on iTunes so you'll be the first to know when a new episode drops. This show is hosted by me, Mia Freedman, and produced by Ariza Ratliff for the Mamma Mia Podcast Network. You can find out more about all our shows on the Mamma Mia Podcast Network's Facebook page or on my Facebook page, Mia Freedman.
Contact us, suggest an interview subject, leave feedback or just show us your love via Twitter at Mamma Mia podcast, or by emailing podcast at MammaMia.com.au.