She may look every inch the glamorous supermum with smoky eyes and spiked heels, but TV personality Nicky Buckley wants every mother in Australia to know that behind the diamante and plunging décolletage she wears on Seven’s hit show, Dancing with the Stars, there’s an ordinary mum who still does the shopping and the bedtime storytelling and occasionally “gets tired and cranky” and fights with her husband.
“Everyone always tries to paint the picture of the perfect juggling act,” says Nicky, 39, kicking off her dancing shoes and curling her legs up beneath her on the sofa. “That’s what we try for, but it’s not always perfect.
“Parenting is really hard. It’s an amazing juggling act, and I’d just like people to know that I’m not perfect, we’re not perfect.
“People have to understand that when you see all this,” she gestures with a wide sweep of her arm, taking in the lights, photographers, stylist, make-up artist and all their paraphernalia, “it’s like, the full works. And they don’t see all that goes into it. They see this perfect image, and that’s not what it’s like.
“We’re always trying to re-evaluate work and trying to make it fit because we know how special our job as parents is. And I like to work. That’s how we make our money, and that’s how we’ve chosen to do it. I guess I take after my father, a little bit financially-driven, to make sure we’re covered. But if I didn’t have to, I wouldn’t. I’d be more than happy to not work and be a full-time mum. At a time like now, when it’s just flat out, we knuckle down, and then, we’ll go for a few weeks and not work.
For the past nine weeks, Nicky, a former model and Sale of the Century co-host, has been operating way out of her comfort zone — and aching in parts of her body she didn’t know existed — and she freely admits that family life with husband, Murray Bingham, 41, and their three gorgeous boys, Cooper, eight, Jasper, seven, and Baxter, two and a half, has been knocked a little off its axis by Dancing with the Stars‘ demands and her renewed celebrity.
Don’t miss what Nicky Buckley has to say about fame, family and her not so perfect life.
