‘It’s not everyone’s bag’: How Natalie Barr became breakfast TV’s greatest survivor
Sunrise co-host Natalie Barr has been part of Carols in the Domain for the better part of 13 years, co-hosting with Grant Denyer, Matt White, David Koch, or as part of a Sunrise group effort. This year will mark her second alongside Matt Shirvington, and the first since the pandemic to be broadcast live. The theatrical nature of the event still makes her nervous.
“I don’t perform on a stage any day of the week,” says Barr. “When you step out on a big stage like this with proper performers, it’s nerve-wracking. There are people tuning their instruments and practising their dance moves, and choirs humming. It’s an exciting vibe backstage, but we don’t necessarily know what we’re doing or where we’re standing. We have to be told everything.”
Natalie Barr with her Sunrise co-host Matt Shirvington. Barr has become one of the great survivors of breakfast TV.
Barr is more comfortable in the Sunrise studio in the wee hours of the morning, where she has, over the last 21 years, become one of the great survivors of breakfast television, outlasting former Sunrise hosts Koch, Melissa Doyle and Samantha Armytage. She’s been there longer than her counterparts on Nine’s Today (Karl Stefanovic started in 2005), while ABC News Breakfast just lost their longest-serving host, Michael Rowland, who announced his departure this week after almost 15 years in the job. Barr, however, isn’t going anywhere.
“I grew up in a country town [Bunbury in Western Australia], hoping that I’d get to Perth to a television station, and here I am in Sydney hosting the biggest breakfast show in the country,” says Barr, who joined Sunrise in 2003 as a newsreader. “I have no complaints.”
Having started on Perth breakfast radio, Barr went on to work in US television, scoring a nomination for a Los Angeles Area Emmy Award for her coverage of the OJ Simpson car chase. Her ascension in 2021 to Sunrise co-host with Koch, replacing Armytage, was acknowledgement of Barr’s consistently trustworthy persona in this fiercely competitive space. It’s no surprise that she rates the Jennifer Aniston-Reese Witherspoon drama The Morning Show (ironically titled the Morning Wars in Australia because of a clash with Seven’s show of the same name), as “the most accurate show that portrays breakfast television”.
Natalie Barr and Matt Shirvington will co-host the first live broadcast of Carols in the Domain since the pandemic.
“There’s a lot of truth in it,” she says. “I’m not saying everything in it is true. But it gives you the feeling – the relentlessness of it, and the cutthroat nature of it … There are people who do not work well in shift work. It wears on your body. It’s not everyone’s bag. That’s never been the biggest issue for me. As long as you get into bed at a certain time and set your alarm and get up … I mean, people are doing it all around town.”
The 24-hour news cycle means it’s not just the gruelling hours on set that require discipline.
“We used to get up and read the papers. Now, by the time I’ve driven home from work, there are more updates. By the time I’ve had my nap, there are more. And if you’ve gone for a walk or got the groceries, you’re behind.”
Aside from Carols in the Domain, Barr has no desire to diversify. She refuses to do Dancing With the Stars, maintaining she can’t dance. A recent clip on the Sunrise Facebook page of her jiving to Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up backs up this claim.
“Apparently my dancing is worse than Elaine from Seinfeld!” she says, laughing. “Just because you’re on television doesn’t mean you can do everything … These are really lucky jobs that we have and they won’t last forever. I thank my lucky stars that I’ve been in this privileged position all this time.”
This year’s Carols in the Domain line-up includes the Wiggles, Rhonda Burchmore, Hugh Sheridan, Samantha Jade, Conrad Sewell and Budjerah. Dancing with the Stars dancer Kym Johnson choreographs and performs, and musical director Chong Lim makes a return.
“I absolutely love Christmas,” says Barr, who this year, along with husband, commercial editor Andrew Thomson, marks her first as an “empty nester”, with their youngest son studying commerce in Canberra. “And I love doing Carols. It’s such a special night. It’s gorgeous walking out and seeing that sea of candles.”
2024 Carols in the Domain airs on Saturday, December 21, at 8pm on Seven.
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