My happiest Christmas ever: Jessica Mauboy reveals “I’ve found the love of my life”
Jessica Mauboy’s career is flying high, but the real success story is unfolding in her private life, as she builds a relationship she hopes will last a lifetime. Michael Sheather travels to Darwin to meet Jessica’s warm and loving family, who inspire her
Jessica Hilda Mauboy’s urge to sing is irresistible. Flopped on the back lawn of her parents’ Darwin home, Jessica, 27, is holding her four-year-old niece, Ruby, in her arms
and softly crooning in that distinctive and deeply resonant voice that has endeared the Darwin-born songstress to music lovers across the nation.
“All I want for Christmas is you …” sings Jessica, gently tapping Ruby’s nose with her index finger. And as she lifts her voice, Jessica’s gathered family – everyone from her 72-year-old aunt, Harriet (who, with Jess’ grandmother, Hilda, introduced Jessica to gospel singing) to her mother, Therese, and
even The Weekly photographic crew – lift their voices in a stirring rendition of the Christmas classic that wafts on the steamy afternoon heat like an alleviating breeze.
In fact, if it weren’t for the scent of tropical flowers and the sweat dripping from your nose, you would swear you had dropped into a scene from that Christmas themed rom-com, Love Actually.
Yet there’s nothing staged about this. The joy Jessica evokes with her voice is genuinely infectious, an effortless gift that goes straight to the heart of the Christmas spirit.
Moreover, it is her family – Jessica is the third eldest of five daughters to Therese and Ferdy Mauboy – that has encouraged, cajoled and supported Jessica from childhood to follow her dream and transform that gift into a career and a life.
“Every Christmas is an emotional time in our family,” explains Jessica. “I can’t remember a Christmas in the past decade that I haven’t cried because the emotion is just so intense.
“I spend so much time away from them, the emotion bubbles to the surface when I am here. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have them. I don’t know what kind of personality would be brought out. Would I be a different person, would I be more angry or an egotistical kind of person who didn’t give a shit?
“But I do care. I care about what kind of person I am and that’s from having my number one supporters – my mum, my dad, all my sisters. They know every detail about me – every crack, flaw and foible, everything I love – and it’s really warming.”
Alone in the spotlight
In an intimate and far-ranging interview, Jessica discusses the preparations for the Mauboy family Christmas in Darwin and, along the way, reveals the loneliness of life on the road, her relationship with boyfriend Themeli Magripilis and moving in together, as well as a special Christmas gift for her mum.
If family is the foundation for Jessica Mauboy, her relationship with her boyfriend of nine years, Themeli, a 27-year-old former
Darwin council worker, is the bedrock. “Them”, as Jessica calls him, has just moved to Sydney to share her life. It is, she says, a decision that is both a long time coming and indicative of how deeply they feel about each other.
“There was a moment the other day,” recalls Jessica. “We were cleaning up after breakfast in our apartment and I was saying, ‘No, not with that cloth; don’t wipe the table with that cloth.’ It was so serious and we both stopped and looked at each other, and started laughing.
“While it was funny, it was also a special moment because we’re finally living under the same roof, waking up with each other and seeing each other every night when we come home.
“It’s all so new and lovely. It’s lovely to know our relationship is so solid and we can actually grow with each other now, and not be at a distance, only connecting over the telephone with all those phone bills. “There’s a sense of being there for each other, not just emotionally, but physically being there, and that has made a huge difference for us.”
Having Themeli beside her also solves another problem for Jessica. In the past, the need to travel and perform has often meant that when the stage lights fade she is left alone staring at the four walls of her room.
“You go on stage and sing, and there’s the crowd in front of you, and the lights and all the noise and commotion,” she explains. “But then everyone goes home and I was left on my own. It was so quiet. That was really hard. That was when I wanted to call Them or my sisters and because it was three o’clock in the morning, it would usually be one of my sisters.
“I don’t have to worry about that now because Them is here and I can talk to him. I used to feel embarrassed that I’d be calling, the need to talk to someone, but I’m not anymore.
But I’ll still call my sisters at three in the morning, just to stir them.”
Jessica and Themeli have dated for nine years. They were aware of each other because Themeli had gone to the same school as some of her Darwin girlfriends. “One of my girlfriends had a crush on him and thought he was pretty hot,” Jessica recalls. “So I knew of him, yet didn’t know him.”
That changed when Jessica came home after Australian Idol in 2006. She was with a group of friends playing “dare” in a local nightclub. Her dare was to sneak up behind Themeli and pinch him on the bum without getting caught.
“He was with his mates on the other side of the bar,” Jessica says, “so I snuck around and reached through between his friends and – snap – I did this crab claw on his arse and ran back to my friends, saying, ‘I did it, I did it!’ ”
Later, when she was buying a drink, she looked up to see Themeli standing next to her. “He leaned down and whispered, ‘I know it was you … ’ I was so embarrassed, I nearly died.”
They ended up dancing, but Jessica thought that would be it, a passing acquaintance in a nightclub. Yet everywhere she went in the next few months it seemed Themeli would pop up. “It was weird,” she says. “He was everywhere. Whenever I went out, I would see him. One night, he came over. He told me, ‘I know your dad, Ferdy. He used to change my nappies.’ I was like, ‘What? Are you kidding me?’ ”
When she asked her dad Ferdy, now 58, it turned out Jessica’s Mum went to school with Themeli’s Dad and that his parents used to hang out with Ferdy and play soccer. “It blew my mind,” she says. “It was so freaky.”
Over the next few weeks, they grew closer and Jessica started to fall in love. “I honestly didn’t think it was going to last,” she says. “I’d experienced puppy love before, but I wasn’t in that world of going out with anyone. For me, it was always about family and friends.”
Yet, in Themeli, Jessica also knew she had found someone special. She knew she wanted it to work, but at the same time couldn’t see how. “I was travelling all the time, flying here and there. I had this job that kept me moving, I kept telling myself it couldn’t last, then I simply gave up.”
Jessica set herself to recording her second album, a mammoth undertaking, along with four months writing and recording in the US. She was the “It” girl – parties, invitations, glamour, a “fabulous” life – but it was also lonely.
“I was missing my family, missing being able to laugh,” she says. “And I kept thinking about him, about being with him. I realised I wanted him in my life, to be part of my life.”
As soon as she could, Jessica took the next plane to Darwin. “I remember sitting there with him and it was
feeling so real, but I was making it hard for myself when it should have been easy. I kept telling myself,
‘I want to be with you, I want you in my life. I want you to be part of my family. I want a partner who I can talk to, spill everything to. but also handle my mad, crazy family.’ ”
Despite the family’s shared history, Jessica’s mother and sisters were wary of Themeli. “I was thinking, ‘What’s this Greek boy think he’s doing?’ ” says Sandra, Jessica’s eldest sister. “I probably gave him the hardest time, a sense that if you mess with my little sister, you’ll be messing with me.”
“They were being protective,” explains Jessica. “There were moments I was so embarrassed. There was an element of taking their Jess away from them. Then they started to realise he wasn’t like that. He was always there. He helped. He mowed the lawn – not because he was trying to win them over, but because that is what he’s like.
“He has a big heart. There’s so much heart in everything he does and he means it. That’s what really won me over. They loved that he was able to understand that and have that same value of protecting, just like his family.”
So, will there be a wedding in the future? “I know I want him to share my life and he wants me to share his,” says Jessica. “We’ll see what happens.”
Her album from the Seven Network TV series The Secret Daughter hit the national music charts at No 1 in October, staying on top for nearly a month. In tandem, the TV show has attracted 1.3 million viewers and will return next year for a second season.
“The songs on the album are the songs Mum used to sing around the house when I was a kid,” says Jessica. “They are the soundtrack of my life.”
Her success has had a profound effect on her family, too. “We are so proud of her,” says Mum Therese, 52. “And even though she’s come such a long way, she’s still that same Jess that we all love.”
A special message
In the meantime, there’s Christmas to prepare for. Jessica says the festive season is always hectic in the Mauboy home. “Christmas can be intense,” she says. “Sometimes, it’s so intense we end up having a fight. We’ll be yelling and jumping up and down, and then suddenly we’re laughing and crying, and eventually we’ll all be singing, packed into Mum and Dad’s lounge room and dancing. It’s wild and crazy, but it’s family and that’s what it’s all about.”
She says her favourite Christmas memory is a message that came to her last year via a complete stranger. “I was doing a gig in Darwin about four months before Christmas and signing autographs afterwards,” Jessica recalls. “A woman came up to me to tell me that she’d had a visit from my [late] grandmother on my dad’s side. This woman said that she was looking after me.
“She told me I was on the right path, that I was making the right choices. She said another spirit had visited her, too. It was my mum’s dad, who passed away when my mother was a young girl. Mum’s always struggled with not having her parents around and having to figure out life on her own.”
Jessica kept the message to herself until Christmas Day. “I told Mum that her father had sent a message that she’d done a magnificent job with all of us, that she is being a good mother. When I told her, she went very quiet, something unusual for my mum. But this was a beautiful, peaceful quiet. It made a big impact on her and changed her, I think, in the way she deals with life. That moment gave her strength.
“I pressed play on my iPhone and Mariah Carey, Mum’s favourite singer, started up and we all started laughing. My eyes filled with tears – I’ll never forget it. It’s the most important Christmas I’ve ever had.”
“He has a big heart. That’s what really won me over.”