Ed Sheeran won’t deter her – Hayley Holt now has ‘hot’ Eminem in her sights
It seems last year’s war-ofwords with Ed Sheeran hasn’t put Hayley Holt off musicians. The Breakfast host caused plenty of controversy last March when she described the much-loved British pop star as a ‘‘suck-up’’ and said his music was boring. Sheeran responded by wearing an All Blacks shirt with her name on the back, before sending it to her.
Laughing about the incident now, the 37-year-old Holt says she’s desperate to interview Eminem, who is due to perform in Wellington early next month.
‘‘When I was giving up alcohol, he was an inspiration because he’d been through that himself,’’ she reveals.
‘‘I just think he’s a really interesting character. He’s got a lot to say, but people think he’s just this stupid rapper so he should shut up. He’s quite a complex guy – it would be great to meet him – and he’s hot.’’
Reflecting on the Sheeran spat, Holt describes the whole thing as ‘‘surreal’’.
‘‘I thought, ‘what is going on the world?’ It all started with me saying I find his songs boring because they all sound the same and ends up with him wearing an All Black shirt on stage and then sending it to me.’’
Stuff has learned that the shirt and a signed poster were secretly dropped off to a Breakfast producer’s house in the dead of night, but that only the shirt made it to the studio that morning. However, the poster did eventually make its way to Holt and now sits in a special place – framed on a wall at her parents’ home.
She now says that Sheeran is not only a phenomenal musician, he’s also ‘‘a smart guy. I think that’s what endears him to people, he cares, takes notice.’’
Those are qualities Holt hopes Kiwis also associate with her. After stints on The Crowd Goes Wild and Back Benchers (as well as appearing on reality series Treasure Island and Dancing with the Stars), her first year on Breakfast culminated in her winning TV Personality of the Year at the New Zealand Television Awards.
‘‘I absolutely did not think that was where the year was going to end up,’’ says Holt, who admitted she was very nervous when she started on the morning show in January last year.
‘‘Obviously I’ll take it [the award]. It was a beautiful and pleasant, wonderful surprise. But I don’t know if it has sunk in yet, or what it even means, but it has done some great things for my confidence.’’
Reinvigorated by her summer break, Holt says she spent her downtime sleeping and ‘‘reflecting consciously and subconsciously on the past year.
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.’’