Holt now has ‘hot’ Eminem in her sights
I think you need to do that – step away from what you are doing so that you can see what it means, how important it is and not take yourself too seriously. It was really helpful to let it all settle and come back without that high stress level which I carried with me last year.’’
She admits that she still has a few nerves before each show (‘‘and I think you need that’’), but that the extremities of excitement and terror have subsided.
Holt puts that down to finding her ‘‘home’’ within herself.
‘‘It’s such a cliche, but until you’re secure in yourself you can’t show that security to other people. As soon as you’re comfortable, you’re not going to make people nervous as they watch or be waiting for you to slip up because it looks like you’re going to. As soon as you don’t worry about that – and slipup and laugh it off – then you’ll feel much better.’’
She says what she particularly loves about being on Breakfast is having a team to ‘‘bounce off’’.
‘‘It is great. If someone is having a quiet day then people sort of fill the void. Then you’ve also got so many different opinions. We can sort of shoot each other down and get each other in trouble, as we like to do. We’re kind of like a family of brothers and sisters who love each other, but also love to niggle.’’ However, Holt admits there is still one thing she hasn’t got used to – the early starts.
‘‘I don’t think you ever adjust your life to it,’’ Holt says of her 3.30am weekday rises. ‘‘It’s basically a life lived in jetlag. I set three different alarms because the first one will go off and I’ll just turn it off and not think about it. Then I’ll turn the second one off. Then, it’s the third time and I’ll go, ‘oh s… that actually means I have to get up’. I think right now I’m speaking to you, it’s around 11.30am and I feel a bit like a zombie.’’
She says she was warned this would be the case earlier in her career when she asked her now fellow TVNZ colleague Hilary Barry about early starts.
‘‘I asked her, ‘when do you get used to it’, and she looked at me and said, ‘you never do’.’’
‘‘I need to work out whether I need to meditate at different times or nap at different times, because it is hard to get stuff done when you feel like you’re constantly walking through a swamp.’’
That though hasn’t stopped her enrolling in a university course in modern political thought this year. While she won’t be drawn on any future political ambitions of her own, the former Green Party candidate for Helensville says she’ll ‘‘always be interested in politics’’.
‘‘History is actually my passion, but what I love about politics is it is kind of applying the lessons of history to now, which funnily enough people don’t ever do. Through the ages we just do sort of keep repeating the same cycles.’’
Keen to do more long-form interviews and edit them herself (‘‘although I don’t think that’s possible on Breakfast, so I’ll leave that for the future’’), Holt says the most surreal on-screen moment for her last year was getting the chance to interview Winston Peters.
‘‘I had to pinch myself, because I was sitting there talking to him and he was joking and acting like he knew who I was. Which, as someone who grew up seeing him on my telly as a child, just blew my mind.’’