She is one of the most respected television interviewers in the country. And A Current Affair presenter – and TV WEEK Gold Logie nominee – Tracy Grimshaw has some advice for female journalists wanting to emulate her career.
“I’d say, carve your own path,” Tracy, 58, says. “A lot of women on air nowadays feel like they have to standardise themselves. But they should be brave, break the mould and stand out from the pack.”
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That’s what Tracy has been doing since she joined the Nine Network in 1981, when there were only two female reporters on the road.
“Women were not newsreaders, they presented the weather,” Tracy recalls. “That was what the industry was like back then. There weren’t a lot of women who were role models.”
Tracy wants other women in media to be ‘brave.’
This is Tracy’s 13th year on A Current Affair. Before that, she was co-host of Today for nearly a decade, first with Steve Liebmann, then with Karl Stefanovic.
Tracy says she’s “completely amazed” she’s in the running for Australia’s biggest TV award.
“I tend to always think what I do is about the stories, rather than necessarily about me,” she admits. “I don’t look for attention. I like to recede into the background.”
One of Tracy’s best recent interviews was with disgraced TV gardener Don Burke last year. The former host of Burke’s Backyard was facing a string of sexual assault allegations at the time.
“In the beginning, I was a little surprised he was willing to be interviewed,” Tracy admits.
“The interview was challenging, because I’d had a professional association with Don for quite some years. But I like a challenge – and that was a good one.”
Tracy wasn’t afraid to ask the hard questions when she interviewed Don Burke in 2017.
For more from Tracy’s exclusive interview, pick up a copy of this week’s issue of TV WEEK.
Our Gold Nominees Special features six different covers, one with each of our Gold Logie Award nominees: Tracy, Grant Denyer, Amanda Keller, Jessica Marais, Andrew Winter, and Rodger Corser.
