Moment of truth
Noni Hazlehurst hosts a new documentary series Every Family Has A Secret, following everyday Australians as they discover the truth about their family’s past. She tells DANIELLE MCGRANE what happens when secrets are exposed.
Sometimes, the truth hurts. But it can also set you free. A new SBS documentary series, Every Family Has A
Secret, is putting these theories to the test as people delve into their past – on TV – to solve their family mysteries.
“You wouldn’t do it if you could live with the fact that you didn’t know and so these people really, really have a burning desire to understand and make sense of what they know and what they don’t know,” Noni Hazlehurst said.
The actress, who presents the series, serves as a guide for the brave people who are willing to unearth their family’s secrets to find out more about themselves.
“It takes a lot of courage because in some instances people weren’t overly optimistic about the outcome. In some instances it stirs up family issues – other people in the family might not be happy about it, but it’s a measure of how real these things are for them,” Hazlehurst said.
In the series, the actress meets six people who are grappling with a family secret, many of which are dark. One woman wants to find out
if her father was a Nazi sympathiser, another wishes to uncover the crime her mother kept secret which saw her jailed in one of the country’s toughest prisons, others are on a search for their real parents.
“Your most immediate environmental conditioning comes from your parents,” Hazlehurst said.
“Sometimes I think we blame what happened in the past for how we behave in the present, which is not necessarily useful, but these people are haunted by things that happened in their childhood that they don’t understand. It reinforces how important it is to communicate with children truthfully.” So the stakes are high. What everybody had in common was a deep need to find out what it was that had been deemed worthy of being hidden.
“That’s the other question to ask, ‘Why didn’t I know this stuff?”,” Hazlehurst said.
“People carried shame and guilt for years about things that now would just make us go ‘Oh well, that’s interesting’.”
Times may be changing, but that doesn’t mean any of these secrets were easy to confront, so Hazlehurst was on hand to help make it easier for the people involved.
“I tried to put them at ease, and when they became emotional I’d comfort them, if that was necessary, and ask the questions that the audience would like to have answered,” she said.
“You get to see people being real and that’s unusual on television because we’re used to so-called reality being exploitative and manipulative and heavily edited to suit an agenda, whereas this uncovers everything step by step to the best of our abilities.”
The show is also respectful to the people taking part, and allows the viewers to watch things unfold naturally.
“Real life is always far more fascinating when you actually scratch the surface and get to who people are underneath. It’s much more interesting than something that you know is exploiting you, the viewer, and also the subject,” Hazlehurst said.
“That’s the joy of this, it connects people because we realise how vulnerable we all are with the truth. The truth can make you very vulnerable and exposed.”
It’s also not a show for the faint-hearted. There’s disappointment, elation and horror, often in just one story.
“When I watch the programme it still brings me to tears because it really is high stakes for these people and it means so much to them, and to see people in that state is a privilege and it helps you to connect,” she said. Every Family Has A Secret Tuesday, 7.30pm on SBS n