EYES ON PRIZE
Beau Ryan hits the road to host a reboot of the globe-trotting reality series The Amazing Race Australia, writes Holly Byrnes
WHEN Channel 10 courted former Footy Show larrikin and
Sunday Night Takeaway jester Beau Ryan as the new host of its rebooted reality series The
Amazing Race Australia, the 34-year- old told them they had the wrong guy.|
As anyone who has watched the global adventure series knows, the New Zealand-born frontman of the US format Phil Keoghan is the straight face at the end of each episode’s pit stop.
And if there’s one thing Ryan doesn’t do well, it’s boring.
Or cope well without his make-up artist wife Kara and young kids for that matter.
So being asked to helm a production that would send him overseas for six weeks made him shake his head and pass on the job of a lifetime.
“When I fi rst considered signing on for the show, the longest I’d ever been away [from home] was two weeks and to be honest, I’m quite a needy guy,” Ryan says.
“I’m not going to lie, I’m very dependent on my wife and it works both ways.”
At one point he considered flying his wife and their sevenyear- old daughter Remi to meet him at the halfway point “but logistically it was impossible,” Ryan explains.
After rebuilding their marriage in the fallout from his muchpublicised 2015 cheating scandal with his pantomime co-star and Hi- 5 singer Lauren Brant, it’s an impressive sign of Ryan’s rock solid devotion to putting his family before his work.
Any woman might not be so quick to send their husband overseas, hopscotching from one hotel after another – but Ryan says his union today is a lifetime away from that misstep five years ago.
“We’ve been to hell and back, as you know,” he admits, “but
I’ve grown a lot as a person,” explaining “my wife has always been the strong one out of the two of us.”
The infidelity came in what can only be described as Ryan’s lost boy days, searching for a new path after retiring from full-time professional rugby league.
He had juggled his playing days with presenting roles on Nine’s NRL Footy Show, showcasing his natural flair for comedy and every man approach to reporting.
But that job would go under too, when The Footy Show was axed as a costly anachronism last year.
Instead of going dark and denying his mistakes, Ryan won plenty of fans for the forthright way he owned the messy affair, doing the hard yards and repairing his marriage.
“Where I am right now, compared to where I was five or 10 years ago, I’m a different person,” Ryan says.
“I’ve learned a lot in my life and been in this industry for a while. We’ve had our ups and downs but my wife has been there the whole time,” he says in tribute. “We’re stronger for it, we’re super-happy and have been happy for a long time now. Looking back at it now, she probably had reason and anybody would have concerns when I was away for that long.
But if it was a test, we passed.”
Saving the longdistance and clearly loving family was daily FaceTime calls from all corners of the world, as well as a promise to take his wife, daughter and two-year- old son Jesse back to his favourite fi lming spots.
“I would never have gone to some of the places we went to, especially in Africa, ever. But now I want to take my wife and children there,” he enthuses.
“We went to some beautiful places, some barren places, some tropical places, we went to the mountains; but when I met the [African] people, I couldn’t stop smiling.”
The international franchise has a reputation for getting access to some of the most inaccessible parts of the world and fi lming rights in iconic landmarks – and Ryan reveals the new Aussie series is no different.
In a pinch-me moment, Ryan and a small crew were left waiting in the sandy dunes of one location when the racers – fighting for the $250,000 prize money – appeared on the spectacular horizon.
“I’m squinting to look closely and they’re coming towards me on camels. This moment, right there, is what the race is all about. I just remember looking at my producer and going, ‘ Where are we and what are we doing?’ We had about 40 people hiding behind a dune because they couldn’t be in the drone shot and everyone was smiling from ear to ear. I thought, ‘ This is what
I’m talking about, this is what I signed on for’.”