Ahead of a dream gig hosting Oprah Winfrey’s Australian tour, Melissa Doyle reflects on marriage, milestones and managing a portfolio career.
Stellar: You’re about to sit down with Oprah Winfrey for a series of in-conversation events across Australia next month. Oprah announced your hosting role on her Instagram by singing your name in classic Oprah style. That must have been surreal …
Melissa Doyle: I need to clip that up and use it as my voicemail. Our first conversation was a Zoom chat. It’s early in the morning, I’m about to go and walk the dog, and my husband John was working from home. I thought it was a phone call with her team, then I get a message saying [Oprah is] gonna jump online in 30 minutes. I’m like, “Oh my God, s***, John, take the dog.” I had to quickly have a shower, wash my hair, look a bit decent and presentable. We did a Zoom chat, and she just jumps on: “Hi Mel, how are you?” Honestly, very cool. We’re going to try to catch up the day before it kicks off so we can meet in person and I can get my inner-15-year-old fangirling out of the way, so that when we take to the stage I can relax into it. It’s certainly intimidating. You really want to impress Oprah Winfrey.
Listen to Melissa Doyle on a new episode of Something To Talk About below:
Stellar: Oprah was no doubt very intentional in selecting who would interview her. A lot of people would happily have put up their hand.
Melissa Doyle: I’m sure she did her research, as did her team. Throughout my career, being the facilitator for somebody to tell their story has been the best part of my job. I feel honoured and humbled to have been chosen. I’m still pinching myself. You know when you have your fantasy dinner party list? She’s been on mine. I would have Oprah Winfrey and Michael Parkinson – they’ve interviewed everybody. What fascinates me is: who stood out to them? Who surprised them? Who left her cold? Who made her change her thinking, her trajectory? They’re the moments I think would interest all of us.
Stellar: Like Oprah, you’ve gone through many different incarnations in your career. Since leaving Seven in 2020, you’ve gone on to host a weekend show on Smooth FM. You’re now back on Seven with the lifestyle show The House Of Wellness and you’ve co-written two books. When you’re not between Zoom calls with Oprah, what does a normal day look like for you?
Melissa Doyle: There isn’t a “normal” day, which I thrive on. I feel lucky at this point in my career that I can do things that resonate with me, things that have meaning to where I am now at 55, having been in the media forever … I’m at that point where I’m able to say no to some things – which is such a luxury – and yes to others that light my fire.
Stellar: It sounds as though you’ve found a happy medium.
Melissa Doyle: It still ebbs and flows. There are times I’m madly busy and times when I’m not, but I’ve learnt to sit in the quiet times now, to make the most of it. That list of “to do” things around the house that you’re meaning to get to, now I can do them. After touring with Oprah I’ll have some downtime, so I’m going to paint the lounge room. Learning to balance the hot and the cold of work life is something that’s taken a little bit of time to do.
I love that. “When I’m finished touring with Oprah, I might have time to paint the lounge room.”
When you say it like that … [laughs].
Between two stints on Sunrise and Sunday Night, you spent 25 years at the Seven network. It’s been over five years since you left, but do you find people still saying to you, “Mel, why are you not on Sunrise anymore?”
The number of women I still encounter who were pregnant at the same time I was, and their kids are the same age, and they remember being up feeding their babies and watching the show … what a privilege that was. I feel like we almost transcended the screen.
I’m forever grateful for the opportunities Sunrise gave me, because it lets me now be in the position to step on stage and interview Oprah Winfrey.
I had years of live news experience interviewing anybody, anywhere, anytime. It let me hone my craft. Live TV is quite a beast. You can’t have dead air, you’ve got to keep the show rolling, your adrenaline is peaked for the entire three hours.
Sunrise viewers even named your yet-to-be-born daughter Talia “Noodles” while you were pregnant.
She still gets that! There is an intimacy in so many forms of media that’s really special. Having letters from people who had been going through chemotherapy or at home feeding a baby or going about their life moments but feeling like they weren’t alone. May that always continue in all different forms.
You and David Koch were co-hosts on Sunrise for almost 12 years, between 2002 and 2013. Do you keep in touch?
Absolutely. We shared some extraordinary times and some really big moments, not just career wise, but personally. I had two babies during my time on Sunrise and his children were a bit older. Being that lovely figure in my life of putting his hand up and giving me a reason to go home or, “I’ll cover this for you. You go home, be Mum. Go and do what you need to do.” When I first came back after having Talia, we took the show on the road each Friday to a different state.
I probably should’ve said no, because I was still feeding and she was 10 weeks old. We were up in far north Queensland, about to do the show and – I’m probably oversharing now – but it was 5.45am. I’m in my room trying to express milk and I’m panicking because I’ve got to be on air in a minute.
And the more you panic, the less it flows. I’m starting to cry and there goes the make-up, and the floor manager is outside yelling for me: “You’ve got to be on set in five minutes.” I remember Kochie coming past the door [and saying], “Are you OK in there?” I said, “I’m trying to express, and it’s all falling apart and I can’t do it.”
And [I hear] his thunderous voice saying, “She’ll be out when she’s ready. Let’s get on with the show.” He had my back. We covered many stories that were emotionally challenging. We had each other’s back. You can’t share those times, then walk away and not have a friendship forever.
Natalie Barr was also on set as the Sunrise newsreader through that time. The two of you would often talk on- and off-air about those shared experiences.
We both were going through this extraordinary job, but [also] having pregnancies, babies, toddlers, and rocking up to work having had no sleep the night before because we were up with a two-year-old. Unless you’re going through that, you really don’t know how hard it is to put on a face and smile and present for the next three hours.
Nat became co-host of Sunrise when your successor Samantha Armytage left the network in 2021. Sam is now over at Nine and will be filling in at Today over the summer break. Would we ever see you doing a fill-in on breakfast TV?
I’ve been there, done that. I did 14 extraordinary years. I don’t believe in going back; I believe in what’s next. How do I keep evolving as a human, as a woman, as a journalist? What’s my next challenge? What can I learn? What can I try? So yeah, no. I loved it, but I’ve done it.
Listen to Melissa Doyle on a new episode of Something To Talk About below:
You and your husband John Dunlop have just celebrated your 30th wedding anniversary.
It sounds silly, but it crept up on us. We had a moment of going, “Oh my God, that’s a long time. How lucky we are.”
It’s probably pot luck. I couldn’t have done the job I did, getting up at 3am for Sunrise, travelling every week, both here and around the world for Sunday Night, without [John] holding the fort and stepping in when I was stepping out. But it’s gone both ways.
We’re not the couple that sits back and analyses it, but we’ve let each other be who we are.
That’s been the dynamic of your relationship since you first met, when John cold called the TV station in Canberra where you were working.
He was working for Australian Swimming and I was a newsreader at Prime Television. He rang and asked me to go in a celebrity swim race. My immediate answer was, “Oh God, no.” [But] I thought I’d be polite and I said, “I’ll sit on it and call you back tomorrow,” because my grandmother is a stickler for manners.
So I rang him the next day just to say definitely no. And he said, “I’ll let you off if you buy me dinner …” And I’m like, I’m not gonna buy a boy dinner that I don’t even know! Anyway, he rang me the following week and asked me out to dinner and here we are.
Much more civilised than going in a swim race.
I’ll take a dinner over a swimming race any time.
Your eldest child, Nick, is 24 and Talia is 21. Since Nick moved out a few years ago, you and John are part empty-nesters. How are you navigating this as a couple?
When Nick first left it was 2020. He went to college in Seattle and that was a really hard moment as a family. Suddenly he’s on the other side of the world, he doesn’t know anybody and they’re in lockdown. We couldn’t get to him. We couldn’t get him home.
That was challenging. We had to do a bit of rejigging. His room was empty and we had to close the door because every time I walked past I’m like, oh my gosh. That took a big adjustment. Now he’s joined the Australian rowing team, based at the National Training Centre in Canberra. He’s coxing. Canberra is three hours down the road, so I’m super happy. Talia finished uni at the end of last year and is still at home.
I told her she can never leave. I’m so proud of them. They’re really lovely human beings, which is what makes me the happiest. They’re both kind and funny and fun and I feel really lucky that if I had a choice of spending time with anyone in the world, that’s who I’d want to spend time with.
Listen to Melissa Doyle on a new episode of Something To Talk About below:
In 2023 you published a book called How To Age Against The Machine. You’re only 55. Do you see yourself still being centre stage in 20 years’ time – like Oprah, who’s 71 – and managing a portfolio career?
I absolutely hope so. I love what I do. I love sharing people’s stories. That’s what gets me up and about every single day. I hope I’m still doing it at 70. I’m not good at sitting still. I’ve got a few other ideas bubbling along that I want to do next year. I want to keep making things. I want to keep creating. I want to keep having an impact in some form. I’ll be a bit wrinklier, but I’ll still be here, fit and active and busy. Never has there felt more of a time for mature [women] to shine. Just because you have a couple of crinkles around your eyes doesn’t mean you can’t do the job. If anything, we’re getting better at what we do. And I’d love to keep going.
See the full cover shoot with Melissa Doyle in today’s issue of Stellar, inside 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.
