After 30 years of making Australian’s belly laugh like no one else, Magda has explained her first and very surprising impressions of Gina and Jane.
The animosity between Magda and Gina was particularly palpable with the 54-year-old explaining at the ASTRA Women in Television breakfast, “I hated her on sight. The dislike was mutual, I thought she was a crass show off and she thought I was a stuck up snob. We were both right.”
They only started to become pals a year after they met, with the comedienne admitting, “When we finally overcame our pride and prejudice a year later when I moved in with a mutual friend, Gina and I completely fell in love over the phone when she would ring to speak to him and get stuck talking to me.”
Thankfully the disdain they held for each other lifted and the pair worked together to bring us classic shows like Fast Forward, Kath & Kim and Big Girl’s Blouse.
But it wasn’t just Gina that Magda first took issue with, “Jane and I can be a little oil and water, we both love one another’s work but we don’t always mesh well,” she explained at the breakfast.
Before adding: “Jane has a completely different rhythm from me as if one of us is doing a foxtrot, while the other is trying to samba. Luckily we are deeply fond of each other and are capable of making each other cry with laughter.”
Despite the turbulent start to their relationship, Gina and Magda have been friends for three decades!
Despite the rocky start, it’s her relationship with Gina and Jane that Magda credits for helping her through darkest days of her life – especially as they showed so much support while she kept her sexuality a secret for almost three decades.
“But certainly when I was coming up through the ranks, if I had been openly lesbian, it would have been an absolute career wrecker,” she explains.
The Open Slather star also took the opportunity to address the Syrian refugee crisis by explaining, “I suppose most of you would think of me as being very Australian, despite my name, because as it turns out, I’m not from here at all.
“My father was a refugee, he was from Poland, he fought in the resistance during the Second World War, made his way to Britain where we were all born and then came here, so I am an example of what can happen when you let refugees in the door.”
