Three years after the tragic passing of her husband John, Kerri-Anne Kennerley has started anew.
Having moved out of the Woollahra house she’d shared with her NSW Lotto founder husband in April, the 69-year-old television veteran has finally settled into her new home in Sydney’s Double Bay.
“It was so nerve-racking,” KAK tells Woman’s Day of her big move, who, several months after losing her mother Grace in May, sold off all her belongings and moved out of the historic home she’d shared with John for 23 years.
“It’s a big house – it took up an entire block, and I didn’t need that,” she says, adding that the home also served as an emotional reminder of what she had lost.
“I think you just need to know it’s time, and it was certainly time. Time for something new.”
While KAK calls her new apartment a downsize, the two-bedroom apartment is certainly no downgrade.
TOUCHING MEMENTOS
Nestled on a cliff on a private cul-de-sac overlooking the beach, her home is still full of classic KAK touches.
There’s an eye-catching red-and-white-striped Gaetano Pesce chair that sits in the corner alongside an enormous marble table in her open-plan dining room. Meanwhile, personal mementos – such as a coat rack with one of John’s hats and a gold Tiffany clock, which had been gifted to them by Ken Cowley at their Opera House wedding in 1984 – all serve as poignant time capsules.
John tragically passed in February 2019, just three years after suffering a fall from a golf club balcony.
“It takes a very long time to just go through the waves,” she says of the grief that still overcomes her. “But I was lucky in the sense that I was still working at Channel Ten at that stage, I was looking after my mother, then the house – selling, buying, moving in… I’ve actually been very busy, and that filled a lot of the holes.”
KAK says there’s a form of “acceptance” now, rather than “the huge emotional turmoil and dread of it”.
“Don’t get me wrong – it does make you cross, that something so simple can be so devastating and lethal. It’s not fair, but life’s not fair.
“It does get ever so slightly easier as the years pass and you start to remember more of the beautiful and fabulous times.”
Despite the new digs, Kerrie-Anne “without a doubt” still feels John’s presence around her. “I’ve got lots of his little trophies everywhere. I’ve also got three of his pipes – he smoked pipes for 30 years – I’ve got two [model] trains, I just need to find a table to put them on,” she laughs.
“And I’ve got Digger,” she says smiling at the adorable golden retriever they shared together and who provided strong comfort to John while he was in hospital.
On whether she ever spoke to John about moving on and finding love once again, KAK makes things clear.
“Nope. Nope. Nope,” she says.
“There was no need for those conversations. I am moving on,” she adds, gesturing to new beginnings in her new home.
NEW CHAPTER, NEW TV ROLE?
After Ten chose not to renew her contract during a bloodbath network restructure in 2020, the self-professed “news junkie” says she’s kept a keen eye on the media, and if the “right project” were to come up, she says she’d love to return – it’d just be on her own terms.
“I will never go back to five days a week, that’s not vaguely in my frame of mind – and the thing is, free-to-air doesn’t exist in the same way any more – it’s a completely different landscape with streaming now.”
KAK says it’s been “sad” to see programs like her former Ten show buckle to woke views and cancel culture.
“I don’t know what got into producers’ minds. They all got scared. They’ve chickened out in my view,” she says.
“When I was on Studio 10, I really felt like we were getting better and better each week. I think in the 18 months I was there, they got more traction and more press than they ever did in the previous five or six years.
“And if I’d produced it, I would’ve doubled down. I would have said, ‘OK, let’s go further, let’s go more controversial.’ But then money got involved,” she says, hinting at the reason she was let go.
“I like to think it wasn’t personal…” she laughs, before adding that she treasured her time working there. “I really loved it and everyone was marvellous to work with.”
Kerri-Anne adds that she feels for the current breakfast TV program hosts and panellists who can’t speak their mind.
“They have to toe the line, because they’ve got mortgages and families – but I don’t give a toss,” she says, adding that if she was invited back to TV, in no way would she kowtow to the same pressures.
“I’d love to do it, to be frank. That’d be the most fun thing for me now because I wouldn’t tolerate it. And I’m also at the stage in my life where I don’t actually have to.
“I’m so last century. I am so not woke and I will not be put upon by woke people.
“I will not be told how to live, how to speak, how to be by other people who won’t tolerate who I am.”
Kerri-Anne unwittingly became the face of the anti-woke movement during her time on the show, particularly after an argument between her and fellow presenter Yumi Stynes generated national headlines in 2019.
“I never intended on being controversial,” she says. “But I think people were surprised because for 30 years prior, I was the interviewer – and all of a sudden, I got to Studio 10 and they wanted my opinion and people were like, ‘She said what?!’ But they can tweet away all they want, I don’t read it so it doesn’t exist. I’ve grown very used to myself, and I quite like who I am. Nobody can take me down.”
When asked if she would consider a podcast, a medium that would grant her free rein, KAK says it’s “too much effort”. “But my friend and I have said we should start writing a series about our time in TV because oh boy, the things we’ve seen…”
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