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Magda Szubanski: Finally, I’m who I’m meant to be

She’s ready to show the world “the real Magda” for the first time.

She’s a national icon but until now, Australia hasn’t known the real Magda Szubanski.

The beloved comedian and author has finally laid herself bare in the August issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.

“I don’t want to sound evangelical and born again, but it really has been an amazing thing for me at this point in my life to do such a 180-degree turn,” she tells us.

“I’m 55 now, so I’m not young, but you see people either contract and start to tell themselves stories about being old and it’s all over, or you open up into it. And I absolutely feel like I’m the latter, opening up.”

The past few years have been big for Magda – she has come out as a proud gay woman and written her first book, Reckoning, an award-winning memoir about her father, a Polish assassin in World War One.

The love and acceptance she has felt since revealing her true self have brought her close to tears.

“To have emerged from behind the mask and still feel that affection and acceptance has actually been really moving,” she says.

“I am who I’m meant to be. I felt for a long time that I was an impersonation of myself, not quite me.”

Read the full story in the August issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly, on sale now.

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