It's in the news today, but it was actually on TV Reload, the podcast Past Deep. They welcome back TV Reload listeners. My name is Benjamin Norris and this is your podcast to get all the inside goss on the popular TV shows you may be watching from around the world. Undeniably, our TV sets are a major part of our home entertainment, and yet very little is known about how our favorite
shows get made. So I've been looking for guests that want to dive just that little bit deeper into the shows they are currently making or filming, so that you can hear all their exclusive stories and gain access to the biggest names in Australian television. I want to thank you for downloading or subscribing to this podcast however you've found it. I love hearing your feedback, so make sure you leave a review or a comment on your chosen podcast platform. This chat, I'm joined by the winner of
I'm a Celebrity, Get Me out of Here. Yes, that's all right, guys. It's Liz Ellis, who we all know is a retired Australian netball player. She was a member of the national team from nineteen ninety two until two thousand and seven. And captain for the last four of those years. She's the most capped international player for Australian netball and has been a fantastic commentator and broadcaster of
sport on Australia ever since. Liz reluctantly entered the Jungle after a pep talk from her teenage daughter, and while she wasn't a favorite at the start of the competition, the popularity seemed to grow and grow as people fell in love with her easygoing nature.
I will ask.
Liz about Kerry Anne Kennelly and find out if she's been in touch since her win, and if Liz actually thinks the cat should have stuck around. We will find out about those food trials and if they're as bad as they look on television, and what toll they actually take on your body post trial. We will discuss how doctor Chris Brown celebrated the final episode and who Liz
thinks could replace him next year from this season's cast. Plus, we will get plenty of exclusives from behind the scenes of our favorite show, I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, which wrapped up on Network ten last night, but you can still catch up on on ten Play if you fell behind. Anyway, let's bring Liz into the podcast. I'm very excited to be chatting to her, let me tell you, and I really hope that you guys also enjoy this episode.
Hi Liz, how are.
You exhausted but elate? How are you well?
I'm just so excited to be talking to you because, you know, throughout this season, I think, like the rest of Australia, we just fell in love with you more and more as the show went on, and I think it must feel strange you've now overtaken Pepper from home and away as their most loved mother in the country.
I don't know about that. I think my kids might argue that with you. Did you see them try and bloody electrocute me?
One of the producers had to have given them five dollars or you know, some lollies from the Lolli jar and said do your worst.
I don't know. I think my kids electrocute me for free. So AnyWho, but.
Do you think the show would change the way that your children look at you?
I mean, you've been seeing them now out of the jungle for the last you know, twenty four hours.
Are they are they thinking Mom's a bit cool?
Oh, look, I think they think I'm cool because they've had a holiday to South Africa and they got and they've got a new favorite uncle who is Uncle Nathan from Geordie Shaw, and I think he's probably not the lord from my children that I want, But yeah, I
think they think it's pretty cool. I think they got a bit of love at school, you know, when I first sat on the show so and then the opportunity for them to just come here and they've been doing game drives with my husband and having a brilliant time. So yeah, I don't know if I'm if I'm quite cool yet, but I'm hopefully I'm on my way.
Test it out when you get home and just be like, make your bed, do your homework, and see if they do them all pretty quickly.
Well, I'm going to actually wear the cram when I tell them to do their homework and make their bed and tidy up, so you know, I'll say, Queen Elizabeth is telling you.
Do it, or you could just say, guess what's for dinner? Guys, we've got elephants, testicles or whatever it is. Wrong.
I've like given them a bit of that accident. See how that pans out.
Did you ever think when they asked you to do this show that you would become Queen of the Jungle?
No? Well, actually, when I first got asked to do the show, I just said, nat flat out, I'm not doing it. It's I don't it's it's not interesting for me. And then I got send a show real and I thought, actually, this could be cool. But I made the mistake of watching it with my eleven year old daughter and she was pumped. She was like, Mum, you have to do this.
It looks like very much fun. We had a long chat about it, and she sort of asked me why I didn't want to do it, and I said, oh, I just I just don't think I need the judgment. And you know, I worry about what other people will change. She's like, you know, you always tell us not to worry about what other people say, and you know, to
do what makes us happy. And I thought, you know, that's the worst thing when you teach your children things and they throw it back in your face and make me go and live in the jungle for a us. So you know, my little my little girl gave me the push and I thought, you know, I should do it.
I should take a risk. So just turned fifty and just we had just got back from trip around Australia in our caravan as a family, and I thought, yeah, it's time for me to take a few risks with my career and just to see where we end up.
What's it a preparation can you do for a show like this? I mean, what's the time frame from being asked to be on the show and then going into the jungle, and then did you utilize that into trying to do an differently with your body or with your mentality? Like what sort of preparation and how long did you have to do that?
Yeah, there's not a lot of prep you can do, but I found I sort of said yes at the end of January and then I had to leave at the end of March, so you have about two months. In that time. You've got to do lots of psych tests and just to make sure that you're in the right mind frame to go into the jungle, medical tests
and all that sort of thing. And then in terms of just preparation, I actually just cut out alcohol, sugar, caffeine about a month before I went in, so just because I didn't want to be in the jungle with urals, Yeah, with withdrawals, while I was also hungry and deprived of food. Like, I'm bad enough and I'm hungry. I really don't need
hungry being made worse by caffeine addiction withdrawals. So actually, just I've got some advice from some people who had had a bit to do with the show, when they just said, just go off that stuff before you get into the jungles, so you don't have any cravings. And then I just sort of did some meditation and just made sure that if I needed to go to my happy place, yeah, which had turned out when I was eating eyeballs, I had to get to that happy place just that I could go there.
And you know, I just picture you, you know, like you know, when you're normally cooking some eggsy and boiling an eggle or putting it on you do the water test where you make sure that they haven't you know, haven't expired, and then just being like, well, if they've expired, I guess that's just really good preparation for eating some parendousns.
In South Africa. So no water test, let's just do it.
Oh No, you know, I actually didn't do any preparation like that, and I just thought, I've got a pretty strong stomach. Whatever that throled me, I'll just eat it.
Has this show changed you? I mean, could you feel that through the experience.
I mean, we know you've only been out of there for less than twenty four hours, but do you think this has changed the way that you will be and the Liz ellis that we know in the media.
Yeah, I don't know if it'll change I guess the way I am in the media. But I really wanted to show, I guess, the silly side of me because in my career I've always been broadcasting netball and talking about sport and you know, try and be a bit of a serious analyst. But just so, I don't really get to show the silly, naughty side of me very often, so I sort of wanted to show that I might and I might keep it around as long as my mum puts up with me being naughty and rude on television.
She wasn't happy with some of the.
Things I said the anties and end up on Georgie's World of Nathan, like, you know, the guy's got let it anyway.
But it actually I had lots of time to just you know, no distractions. I didn't have to make dinner for the kids, I didn't have to pack school lunches, I didn't have to help my husband with the farm. I didn't have a phone that was distracted me, and I could just think about things. And I actually just had to learn to let the control freaks out of me go and just to let it ride and learn to just roll with whatever got thrown at us. But actually I want it. That's a thing that I want
to take with me. It's just to be a bit more relaxed about stuff, you know, let Matthew and the kids run their own show a bit without trying to organize them, and just just learn to let go and not feel that I have to be in control of every situation.
There's nothing better than putting a pin in the control freak that we all have inside of us.
You know. Yeah, well, and you don't have much choice in the jungle because you really are at the mercy of You can't of the producers and what they want you to do. You know, you can't even wear a watch him. So none of us knew the time. You didn't know how much food you were going to get every night. You didn't know what trials you were going to do, what was going to be trying to eat, So you do really do have to learn to let it go. And it was a really good lesson for me to learn.
Did Dicker have a crush on you? This is what I thought?
And I've spoken about this to a few people, and the older the audience member that I spoke to, the more common that they said, Yes, that man has definitely developed a man crush. What do you think Do you think Dicko has crushed on you a little bit?
I don't know if he crushed on me, but hey, and I he was someone who I really enjoyed getting to know because I had this really cartoon character vision of him from his days on Idol. And what with Dicko, you get this brash for the English, cocky record like
music producer and music executives. But when you start to peel the layers off, he's like, and you know, you peel the layers off, and you cry, and you feel some more layers off, and you cry, and you eventually get to this deep thinking, lovely man who adores his family, He adores his wife and children, and loves music, has know so many people and have done so many things, but he's still on for a chat. So yeah, he and I really developed just a really nice friendship throughout
our time in the jungle. So I don't know if it's if it's a crush, but the feeling between us is mutual. I really enjoyed my time getting to know Ditay.
Well, he had a massive impact. I mean you had a massive impact on him. Who for you like, I mean, I know that you developed that amazing relationship. But it's why people are saying it is the best castle we've ever seen in the jungle. But if you were to just narrow it down to one or two people who've had a lasting impact on you, oh do you know lots.
Of people and it's really hard to narrow it down to one or two because well, we had so much fun. Yeah, I know that we you know, to go into the jungle with someone like Pete Hellier, who I've known for twenty years but never had long in depth conversation with him, it was just amazing to be able to do that. I loved getting to know deb Lawrence, so her and I had lots of chats, you know, with the two Silverhead women in camp and we sort of, you know, looked out for each other a bit when we're both
feeling low at different times. So that was amazing. And then, speaking of amazing, I love getting to know Asia, and you know, she's such a funny, naughty, big hearted woman, and you know, to spend the last three days with her and Harry was just such a delight and such a privilege. And you know, Harry is someone who I feel really privileged to have got to know, and he's
just such a beautiful, brilliant young man. So you know, to watch the younger members of the cast and see where they end up and what their careers do is going to be really exciting for me over the next few years.
I had the privilege of having Asia on this very podcast just before she did the Jungle. Obviously, she couldn't say anything, and nor did I even think of her as doing the show, and all the way, I watched a lot of her seasons which I'd never seen before of Below Deck, and I saw this amazing person.
I was like wow.
But I noticed when I got her on the podcast that her voice had just this big, louder than life, you know, sound to it, and she sounded like that, you know, before the chat, so she was not putting it on. And then when you listen to the audiences watching the show this year, they're like, oh, you know her voice. You know she's putting that on. It's a bit of a character. But that truly is her, isn't it.
That is her. She's at twenty four seven, and you know, you can't go into the jungle and be on camera twenty four seven for thirty one days and put on an act. It it just doesn't last. It just won't happen. So you actually have to be yourself. And that was the best advice that I got. And Asha, what you see is what you get, whether the camera's on or not. That is her. And you know, speaking to her partner Scott, he's like, sometimes it's exhausting that my time's it's fantastic.
That sounds like my partner.
My partner's like, you know what, he is a lot of fun, you know, but you know after a while it's like here we go, put a pin in.
Helen's exhausting. She's so much fun and that really is her and I love her for that because she has no filter, no embarrassment about her like an embarrassed She'll tell the most horrific story about something that she's done. Here. I can't believe you're telling people that. She just laughs. So, yeah, she's beautiful. It's so rare to find someone like her.
I'm assuming everybody from the show has messaged you to say congratulations. Have you heard from Carrie Hank Kettling? Yeah?
I have, And you know, she's someone who I really respect and we've had a long friendship and you know, hopefully we can catch up and have a laugh about everything that went down. But you know, she's someone who she's a giant of the television industry. She's television royalty, and I still have a great amount of respect for her, and we had some lovely chats while she was in the jungle. So yeah, I think you know what happened
is I wasn't in the room. I wasn't there, so I just heard about it secondhand when everyone sort of got back to camp. And it is what it is. And you know, I'll still catch up with Tack whenever I can, and at some point we'll have a round of golf and wine and a laugh.
Well do you think, because you said in the finale last night that you know everyone found the first few days hard. Do you think that maybe pack had missed out on what became the sweet spot of the season, Like, do you think that maybe she left in that original distressed body state where it's like, hang on a second, this is too much and I'm assuming you all thought that,
but then allowed to slip into that sweet spot. Do you think if she'd given it a day or two that maybe it would have been different?
Yeah, I don't know. It's different for every person, and it's hard to sort of make a judgment on what different people think and how they feel and how they're going to work through things. So she made the decision that she felt was right for her, and you know, whether that whether things would have changed or not, I
don't know. It's really hard to speculate. But I hope she can look back on her time at the show with some fondness and you know understand that she's still loved and admired by lots of people.
Well, it's one way to get them to stop calling you every year to usk to do the show. Just go and do two days. You know, I loved your honesty, and I think that has a lot to do with you winning. I think that you embracing you know, the what did you call it last night?
A silver fox?
No, what're yeah? The silver fox. I like to refer to myself as that, just rather than gray headed old ladies.
Do you think that winning shows women in their fifties that age is just a number and that they can do anything.
Yeah, oh gosh, absolutely. And you know, I wanted to get out there and show my kids what I could do, because they actually never saw me playing netball. I have my kids after I finished my netball career, but I sort of wanted to show that, you know, women in their fifties can still be strong and physical and can still face their fears and get through things and be valuable members of a team. And I haven't been in a team for fifteen years, so that was one of
the motivators for me. I wanted to get back out there and experience that camaraderie in the sense of fun, but to show what I could do, and hopefully there's lots of women out there who go, yeah, absolutely, I'm in my fifties or my sixties and I can do this. And you know, part of that for me about embracing my age has just been to look the way I'm supposed to look, and that means I've grown my hair out. I don't diet anymore. I saved three hundred bucks in
half a day every month. So it's actually a really nice place to be in to not have to dye my hair. So yeah, hopefully there's lots of other people out there who go, yeah, I'm going to embrace it and I'm going to go gray, and I'm going to grow I just gracefully.
Which I really appreciate. And what about these food challenges? They were absolutely disgusting, Like I had to stop myself from using any swear words when talking about these disgusting food challenges.
My God.
The one thing that always stays in my mind after a season, I keep thinking about the food challenges. How long does it take for your body to process what you've done to it? I mean, you've eaten something really nasty in a food challenge. Does it have a lasting impact because it's not what you should be eating?
Oh? The first food challenge I did, I just felt terrible and we earned enough. We earned the full compliment of stars that night, and everyone was enjoying their really big meals, and I was like, oh, I think I just have a half serve tanks because no guts were just churning. But then the next day I felt fine. But the second food challenge, where we had to drink
all that revolt I had. My first drink was a combination of fish guts in the century eggs, and then I had to eat chips made of rat, and then we had to drink that putred fermented fish's disgusting discussing. But because it wasn't a lot of chewing gross things, my guts felt fine when I got back to camp that night. But the next day I really struggled. So each food challenge had sort of a different impact. But then a few days later you've done it. It's done.
I mean, it's all food. You look at it and you go, it's gross. But I know they're not going to poison me. I know that everything's cooked and everything, you know, fit for human consumption. You just have to get over the mental hurdle.
Yeah, I don't think any of it's going to be in a boost juice anytime soon, you know.
No, I don't think so. I can't imagine, you know, I've all boost juice is going to go down.
Well, I'll have the Lizellis please. Yeah, I think they'd have some some blowbacks.
Yeah.
What were the celebrations for Doctor Chris Brown's final episode last night? Because yes, you got to celebrate your win, but he also would have been celebrating an amazing tenure on the show. Can you give me an insight into what the celebrations were like last night? For him?
It was pretty emotional just after the show, and you know, it was really sad because everyone was emotional and at the end of an era. So but then a little bit later everyone was sort of you know, there was a rap party and I didn't go to that party because I had to do media, So I can't really give you any insight into what went on. You'll have to speak to someone who was there.
I probably ended up reading about it in the bags, So I wait.
Someone I supposed to be, but it's not going to be me.
He wanted to keep the acknowledgments of his time and winning the show to a celebration that happened in the episode prior when we had the double When do you hear something like that?
Does that? How does that? How does that land?
With you, because I thought that's a pretty impressive thing for him to say, be like, you know, of course we want to send me off in a celebration, but let's make sure that the win has their time to shine.
You might not know if he is. Did you know that?
I knew it. I didn't see I haven't seen that Thursday night episode, but I spoke to Chris when we did the trial with our families and someone had said that he had said a few words that night, and I said, why don't you say why don't you do it on Sunday? And he was like, because Sunday should be all about you guys, And I thought, wow, that's so selfless. And that's why he's so well loved and admired because he didn't make it about him. And you know,
he couldn't controlled that to a degree. To a degree, it was always going to be about him, but he was really keen to make Sunday about us, and Thursday was the right time for him to do it. And I just think that says an awful lot about someone when they're so selfless, when they're not thinking about how they can draw attention to themselves, and you know, get the next headlines. I think that it just shows, you know, how much integrity he has.
Do you think there's someone from your season of the show that could replace him and try and fill those shoes?
Oh, look, my seven year old son's pretty keen. I just yeah, and really like Julia's jokes would go over his head literally and figuratively. So look, I'll get my management team to throw him into the mix and we'll see where it was.
The one thing I didn't see coming. I've heard people say, you know, Bob Erwin. You know, I've heard a few you know names thrown around. Then Robert Owen, but maybe Robert Owen and your son could do it together. I meant that'll be in a different demographic.
Yeah, that's true. Austin Stotts, he's big in the seven year old category. You know.
Do you think with all of these shock exits throughout the season that you know, we saw that people voted because they fell in love with these celebrities and how they behaved in the jungle, not necessarily who they are in the media.
Yeah, I think so, And I think that's the whole point of the show, because how you behave in the jungle really is your true self, and the whole way through I thought, I'm just going to be myself, to act with honesty and integrity and to have fun, and hopefully people fell in love with all of us as we did that. You know, I look at someone like Adam Kearney, who, you know, speaking to his wife last she said she's seen him cry once. His kids have
never seen him cry. And then he comes on to the show and he becomes this beautiful, vulnerable man who just adores his family and misses them terribly, and you can't help it fall in love with that and with people who open their hearts and let you in. And I think just about everyone on the show did that. So you know, we all fell in love with each other, and hopefully Australia fell in love with with my camp mates because they're all just magnificent humans.
I'm assuming that the hierarchy changes sometimes throughout this show. So when it first started, was there ever a conversation about who you all thought would win this show? Because I mean it certainly changed for the audience watching it that everyone was like, oh, well, you know, I think that Peter Hally is going to win this show.
And you know, here's a big star.
You know, we actually never talked about it, isn't that funny. We all had our ideas of who would win, but we've never ever talked about it. It's so weird. It's a bit like a taboo subject.
Okay, really quickly, because every single podcast, this is two hundred and fifty one ends with this so very quickly. Is there anything from behind the scenes that we didn't see that we would love to know as a bit of the magic of what it's like to be on the show.
Oh look, I don't know if they showed it, but the badger, Nick Commons, when he came in, built a rock bass down at the creek, and so most of us stopped showering and just and bathed in this little rock pool every day. That was pretty fun and pretty amazing, and we all just got nude, not together, just like separately.
That'll be on the deleted scenes. Liz, congratulations. I'm obsessed with you, as is the rest of Australia. You well and truly deserved that win. I can't wait to be in your audience to see what you do with this extra boost of celebrity.
Good luck with it all.
Thanks so much. Ben