Today Extra co-host David Campbell and his theatre producer wife Lisa on growing (and working) together after nearly 17 years of marriage.
Stellar: Seven years ago, you appeared on the cover of Stellar with your three children. At the time, each of you said you felt lucky to have met the other. Ahead of your 17th wedding anniversary later this month, do you still feel that way?
David: We’ve seen friends who have relationships that don’t work out, and that’s fine. I think some relationships do have finite endings, and that’s why we need to rethink how we deal with that, as opposed to saying “I can’t believe they’re divorced.”
Lisa: Everybody grows, and it can be luck if you grow together.
David: And we just do. I feel so grateful to have Lisa and the kids in my life … to still be engaged with each other, in love and doing what we do, considering our house is madness and chaos. I’m still so excited to see her every day. I really am. I grow because she’s a good person. I grow to be better for her and for our kids. That’s always been my goal, since I met her.
Listen to David and Lisa on a new episode of Something To Talk About:
Stellar: You recently launched your new joint podcast Into The Austenverse, which explores the work – and its many adaptations – of Jane Austen, and her cultural impact. What has it been like working together again?
Lisa: The joy of having done the podcast is the fact that we get to work together again. [To David] Because despite me saying how wonderful it is that you’ve got Today Extra, it has meant that we don’t work together half as much as we used to when we were first together.
David: We had a great time with it.
Lisa: It’s been a great opportunity to be together, to do things and bounce off each other creatively. It’s been a real joy. I feel very grateful.
What made you want to make a podcast about Jane Austen?
Lisa: David asked me what I felt about the cast of the new Netflix adaptation of Pride And Prejudice. We were talking about that, [to David] and that was when you thought it could be a podcast.
David: Lisa was so passionate about it. And I like the fact [the TikTok trend] #BookTok is happening now and men are starting to get into reading more. I thought that I needed to educate myself on the knowledge that she has about Austen. Like,
why don’t I know this? Why is this a gap in my knowledge? I don’t want to die having never read Pride And Prejudice. That seemed silly to me.
David, you’ve co-hosted Today Extra for 13 years. What’s it like working alongside your co-host Sylvia Jeffreys?
David: Sylvia is so funny and so great, and such an empath. I feel like we’re so in sync – on set and off. We talk and text a lot, but we just make each other laugh. I also feel like we complement each other. She’s such an incredible journalist – if we have to do rolling coverage on the floods, for example, she would say “I’ve got the mayor of Ipswich’s number; I’ll just call him and we’ll get him on the show.” Whereas I’m like, “This just happened in Hollywood …”
Starting in the job in 2012 involved a big pivot from your extensive singing and musical theatre career. Did either of you think that David would still be doing it 13 years later?
Lisa: Oh, it was the hope. It’s the greatest job you can have. [To David] It’s a privilege to have that job, too, because you finish your day at midday, which means you can be there for the kids and I can also work.
David: If I was just doing gigs, I’d have to be out on the road most of the year. So the fact that it does give me the privilege of being at home and watching them grow up is wonderful.
Listen to David and Lisa on a new episode of Something To Talk About:
You’re both in the public eye to an extent. How have you navigated what you share online about your family and how much your children, Leo, 15, and 10-year-old twins Billy and Betty, can access the internet and social media as they grow up?
David: I was certainly more liberal with the kids in the early innocent days of social media. But as they got older, they started to tell me if they didn’t want a photo put up on Instagram. With our eldest son, Leo, the teenager, I will ask if he minds if I put something up before I do it. I don’t want him to have his life bared on my social media for everyone to see all the time. That’s why when people do see him, they’re like “Geez, Leo has shot up …” Because it’s been a while between photos.
Lisa: I would love to be able to say that we’ve had a thought-out plan, but it hasn’t been like that. It’s been bumbling along. In hindsight, I probably would have put up less.
David: With our eldest, we tried really hard for him not to have a phone because it didn’t feel necessary for his life. It was a struggle to navigate him not having things like Snapchat when all his friends were talking on there. But we haven’t been too militant with it, and it did just sort itself out in the end.
Lisa: And when he did have a phone and access to things, he didn’t actually think it was very exciting. I think that’s just where he and his groups of friends are at. They’re not particularly into social media. I’m sure it will be different with our younger daughter.
Into The Austenverse with David and Lisa Campbell is available wherever you get your podcasts, with new episodes released every Monday.
Listen to the couple on a new episode of the Stellar podcast, Something To Talk About, out now wherever you get your podcasts. For more from Stellar, click here.
