ROXY JACENKO New reality show
The radio presenter gives a peek behind the scenes of PR queen Roxy Jacenko’s reality show
Finally, after years of speculation, controversial PR maven Roxy Jacenko has revealed all in the first reality TV show about her life. I Am… Roxy, which aired as part of Network Ten’s pilot week and is available to watch on 10 play, was the brainchild of executive producer Michael ‘Wippa’ Wipfli. “I first had the idea when I was watching those articles just flooding in,” Wippa tells WHO. “I thought, ‘How is this woman’s life still going?’ You’ve got a husband in jail, the cancer, relationship with the kids, the family, the business, the success. When I first rang her, she was in the thick of it with everything that was going on. She said, ‘Call me back. Call me back every month until I say yes.’ ”
And that’s just what the co-host of Nova 96.9’s Fitzy & Wippa – his breakfast radio show with Ryan Fitzgerald – did. Filmed three months ago, the one-off episode focused on her personal life, featuring her husband, former investment banker Oliver Curtis, who served time in jail for insider trading in 2016, and their two children, Pixie, 7, and Hunter, 5.
“She’s completely open, which is rare in itself, and it’s brave too,” Wippa, 39, says. “There weren’t any no-go zones, which was amazing as well, because we had to have some honest conversations about how people are portrayed and what we want in the story and what we want to get out of it. Because for somebody that’s a master of PR, this couldn’t just look like an ad.”
Given Jacenko is no stranger to reality TV – she appeared on the 2013 season of The Celebrity Apprentice – Wippa says she was keen for I Am… Roxy to show warts and all. “She didn’t want it to look like some TV show that was just full of product,” he explains. “She was keen to share the secrets of what she does, but she was keen to show that, through the depths of despair and no matter how hard it can get, at the end of the day family’s family. And she’s there with Ollie and there have been some rough times, but they’re there together as a family.
“They might do things differently; the rules might be different in her household, but it still works. The kids are there. Mum and Dad love each other.”
Wippa is hoping I Am… Roxy will be picked up for a full season. As for radio, fans of Fitzy & Wippa need not fret – the boys will be staying on the airwaves for the foreseeable future. Wippa, who turns 40 at the end of the month, kicked off celebrations early with a trip to Italy with wife Lisa and their two children, Theodore and Jack, along with friends Hamish Blake and Zoë Foster Blake and their kids Sonny and Rudy. According to Wippa, the families had their fair share of laughs.
“A local bloke, who’d taken a couple of shots of the girls, turned to Hamish, and looked at me and said, ‘Would you like a photo with your father?’ ” Wippa recalls. “I was like, ‘I’m in my 30s mate and that guy is losing his hair faster than I am!’ ”
“She’s completely open, which is rare” —Wippa