Dannii Minogue - ‘I hit low points where I thought: “I just can’t take this any more.”

0:00Hello there. Did you know that you can hear all of the things that my guests might have failed to divulge in the main episode by joining us in our subscriber community. Failing With Friends. It's where you will hear really riveting pieces of information like Olivia Atwood's dream date location or Miranda Hart's advice on performing bodily functions in front of your partner. Just follow the link in the podcast notes and we will see you there.

0:36This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Checking off the boxes on your to-do list is a great feeling. And when it comes to checking off coverage, a State Farm agent can help you choose an option that's right for you. Whether you prefer talking in person, on the phone, or using the award-winning app, It's nice knowing you have help finding coverage that best fits your needs. Like a good neighbour, State Farm is there. Welcome to How To Fail, the podcast where every week I ask a new guest about three times they've failed and what they might have learnt along the way. I've thought about packing it in many times.

1:14You fail at having good judgement, you've failed at marriage, I've failed at being able to financially support myself. It was just, it was one thing on top of the other. My guest today has spent four decades in the public eye. Born and raised in Melbourne, the youngest of three children, she became obsessed with the idea of performing after seeing the movie Grease. By 10, she had joined the cast of the Australian TV show Young Talent Time. As a teenager, she signed a record deal and acted on Home and Away. In her early 20s, her debut album went gold in the UK. She went on to have nine top 10 singles, including Jump to the Beat and This Is It.

1:56Over the course of her music career, she spent over 200 weeks on the official UK chart, sold in excess of 7 million records worldwide and scored a record-breaking 19 number one dance singles. She was also one of the first bona fide pop stars to perform at London's GAY nightclub. And after a four-year stint as a judge on the X Factor UK, she now hosts her own queer dating shows, I Kissed a Boy and I Kissed a Girl, both on BBC3 and iPlayer. She is, of course, Dani Minogue, a woman The Guardian dubbed Queen of the Gays for her years of LGBTQIA plus allyship. When she performed jointly with her older sister Kylie at Sydney's Mardi Gras in 2023, the Independent called it the equivalent of a solar eclipse for Aussies.

2:51Asked in a recent interview with Diva Magazine what makes a good ally, Minogue replied, listening is the start. Let somebody tell their story. Dani Minogue, welcome to How to Fail. Hi. It's so wild to be here. I'm so happy to have you here, queen of the gays. I'm not sure about that, but I'll take it. And I wanted to end on that quote because listening is so important, also for what I do. And I think that to be a true and genuine listener, you have to start from a place of no judgment. And I wonder whether part of your ability to listen and show up as an ally comes from knowing what it is to be judged yourself.

3:36I guess so. but I'm also just very interested in the people and their stories and there's a lot of fun a lot of camp a lot of craziness a lot of things I'm just really attracted to but then there are parts where I feel like we could all you know be an ally and create a space where some heartbreak and hurt could be relieved. Yes. And that's why I Kissed a Boy, which is just coming back for its new season, is so important because it is so camp and frothy and fun and brilliant. I know you love reality. You know, I love it. Yes. And it's such a perfect fusion of all the reality TV I love because there is also this really profound undercurrent because we are aware as viewers how far the journey has come and how far there is yet to go and also so much of the personal experiences that those contestants have been through to get there.

4:42What's it like for you being the host? It's a joy and an honour like it honestly is. There's so many of my friends that would literally push me down the stairs to be able to do this so it's great and just to get to enjoy celebrating these people, which I feel like hasn't happened enough on TV. So I felt like there was distinct lack of these people being celebrated or having a chance to explore or pursue love. I'd seen so many dating shows for so many different other people. and my friends had always said how representation on television is so important to be seen and how different their lives would have been if they'd seen themselves on TV growing up.

5:44It's also revolutionary and I wonder if there's part of you that has always felt that instinct for rebellion? Would we call it that? I'm not afraid to stand up when it's needed. I'm not afraid to say something and that's just always how I felt. Performing at GAY years ago, being the first performer and the last one to close their original venue, was an act of rebellion to everybody in the industry who had said, don't do that. It's going to be damaging to your career. And my career was all I had. I wasn't in a relationship. I'm on the other side of the world for my career. But I just thought, I know who I am and that's how I've always stepped forward.

6:38Just because somebody says something about you, it doesn't mean it's true. Performing at GAY was going to, I was warned that it would have a very bad effect on my career because things would be said by journalists or inferred that I wouldn't be able to come back from because it was a different landscape of journalism back then and there was no social media, no right of reply and you couldn't ever say that what a journalist had said was wrong. You could say it wasn't true and nobody would listen to you but you weren't allowed to say anything about a journalist or a publication so it was like you were really backed into a corner but GAY is a place that I would like to hang out with people people that I want to hang out with listening to music that we all want to listen to and dance to and it was about this celebration and being yourself and what we say through I Kissed a Boy and I Kissed a Girl is be who you want to be and love who you want to love.

7:48And we've said that since season one. It's at the start of every show and we say it to the cast on and off camera and it's the most important thing. But that's definitely been the theme that's run through my life. Yes. And because we're living through such a dark and challenging time now for the queer community, especially trans women and men. Do you feel that it's an increasingly important part of your purpose in a way to do this show and to keep showing up in the ways that you do? There's a lot of focus on things that are bad, hard and frightening. And I think there needs to be a lot more space for celebration, for fun, for joy and for love.

8:34I always think, what can I possibly do? I'm just one person. What could I do that can be helpful? And that's amplify love. I love that. What a great answer. It is so important. It's a joy to watch for all of those reasons and more. Now, you are one of those very generous guests who has not just given me three failures. You've given me, I think, five and a half. Well, I thought you could choose your favourite. it's so sweet and generous of you and actually one of the things that you said to me was you put it as one of your failures but I beg to differ failing to be interesting on how to fail I do listen to your podcast and the guests are incredible you're incredible your amount of research and the conversations flow and then I had this all these flutters of nerves like what if I don't fail hard enough or good enough or I'm not interesting enough?

9:35Well, I can tell how much thought you've put into your failures. I am a nerd. I love that. Nerd game recognises nerd game. Yes. Research sticky notes, labels, the whole thing. Before we get onto your failures, I just want to ask you a bit about that point you made about knowing yourself. And so knowing yourself first being the most important thing really, so that you can identify the truth of who you are, as opposed to what people might be saying about you. Where did that come from? Did that come from your parents and your upbringing? My mum was always really adamant that we speak up if there was something that wasn't right and I think that's been really great for me in life and especially as a girl I was sometimes in situations where you're told to be nice or be quiet and I wouldn't that was something that has really given me strength and I think the rest is through experience.

10:49Your first failure is failing to be a bimbo. Yes. There is a specific context to this. Yeah. Tell us about it. So I auditioned for Home and Away and I was given this scene of a character, Marilyn, who's become such a big part of the show and Emily Simons ended up playing Marilyn and I cannot imagine anyone else playing Marilyn and I failed so hard at, I couldn't even convince myself, I couldn't act. And so then I was thinking I'm such a shit actor. But when I stepped back, I felt like it just wasn't right. It wasn't meant to be. I went away thinking, oh, I've messed it up so badly. I have failed.

11:40I probably won't ever get a chance to audition again. And they came back to me and they said, we would like to write a character for you. And it was very interesting to me at the time because of what I was coming out of being on a family show, everything was squeaky clean and all smiles. And it was that place, that TV show that people turned on to escape everything. And it was just about joy. and then I was given this character Emma Jackson who would just say the most horrible things throw things at people get into fights I had no idea how to have a physical fight with someone but I loved it all it was just like coming out of this family show and just being the bad girl so the show that you're referring to pre-home and away is the young talent time which is Is Australia the equivalent of the Mickey Mouse Club?

12:40Would you put it like that? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So do you think the people who auditioned you for Home and Away saw something in you that you didn't see in yourself? Or did you know that that? I just think we all walked away and thought that was terrible. And then somebody must have got creative and thought, I know how we can really make an impact here. Because within Australia, if we take this girl, Nobody will have ever seen her like this. I was 17. I'd never lived away from home. And you've been to Australia, so I moved from Melbourne to Sydney. I had to get my driver's license, a car, an apartment, and work out how to get to work on two different locations with the Gregory's, which is an A to Z, because there were no navigation tools or anything.

13:33And you were living on your own? It was wild. I lived with another girl because my parents were like, you're not going to Sydney at 17 and living on your own. And the schedule was brutal, like leaving home at 6 o 'clock in the morning, getting home at 9, 10 at night and then learning more scripts. I read somewhere that you can't really remember a time before you were famous. Is that right? So I was famous all around Australia at 10 because I'd stepped into this show. I'd done other work before then. So from seven to ten I'd worked. There were only around eight kids on the show at one time and you stayed on the show for six years.

14:12There were only, I think, four channels back then. There was nothing else and it was the biggest Saturday night show. So it was the equivalent of what X Factor was or a Dancing with the Stars, you know, like something so super huge. And so once you stepped into that, everyone knew who you were but so, and you're famous. It's weird. Fame was obviously different then. No social media. Thank God. Yeah. And we didn't have paparazzi in Australia, so I could walk to school even though I was like on this biggest TV show. Did you enjoy it then? Did you enjoy being well known? I had great interactions with people.

14:54So we got lots of fan mail and I still love the fan mail and I would reply like now social media, you might DM someone or respond to something, but it was this beautiful interaction with people. And I've always enjoyed that. I felt the camera like a very friendly place. Like I could just look down into it and from the fan mail I could picture who was at the other side of that. Do you still feel the camera is a friendly place? Yeah. Yes.

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16:11and watch only Murders in the Building, streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply. Your second failure, we're fast forwarding somewhat in terms of years and chronology, but your second failure is failed marriage. You and I both, by the way, also a divorcee, but very grateful for that fact. And I'm a big believer that relationships aren't failures simply because they end, because they teach you something. But I'm so interested to hear about your experience of your failed marriage. Now I don't think it's a failure, but at the time that it ended, my world was very dark and bleak and I just couldn't get over how wrong I'd got this, that I was a bad judge of character and probably a couple of years after that was when I was really well aware of most people saw that coming and I didn't.

17:22So I was 23. I'd obviously lived a big full life and I'd met a lot of people and I thought I'm pretty good at judging people, but love sweeps you off your feet and it's an incredible feeling. And I really got swept away and did not see what it actually was. It should have just been something that was fun. But when to get married for me meant everything because my parents have had this long, full, happy marriage and that's what I wanted and that's what I thought I was going to get. You met your ex-husband on the set of Home and Away. Yeah. He was, you know, hunky and charming and always a big energy walking into a room and made me feel fantastic until he didn't.

18:28And I hadn't realised this, but he was also someone who was incredibly well connected with the sort of Australian elite politically. Yes, his father was prime minister and, yeah. But I knew him as an actor on Home and Away, so I didn't meet him in that world. I wasn't exposed to that world. I'm still not. It's not my place. I had no intention of hanging out in that world. You know, his mother was very wary of me and she thought that I was wanting to be part of that world, whatever it was that I was going to take, take, take from them. And it was the furthest thing from the truth and not what I wanted at all.

19:27so she made it very clear that I was not to be around and she didn't want me a part of anything. Yet Julian wanted me to be his wife and I knew that their relationship, there was a lot had gone on and he loved and adored her but they were not close in many ways so it was a wild time. I mean, it was a lot to take on and that's how swept off my feet I was and thought that it could still work. And so what did go wrong from your perspective? Julian wanted to go to America and work. My work was in London and so I helped him set up in New York. He got on a soap opera there and I committed to travelling back and forth.

20:26because we were married. And each time I came back, there was just something not right. Things I saw in the apartment, how I felt, there were all people around that I didn't know. And he was just very, very distant and to the point that he called it off. But in the meantime, we'd run through all my money and I still don't know if that's sort of what made him just say, all right, I'm out of here, I'm onto something else. I honestly don't know. He has never explained to me, but he knew what situation I was in. So he was financially on his feet, earning all of his money, keeping his money, and I was paying for everything.

21:16So I was not only personally absolutely brokenhearted, but I was broke. I had no money in the bank. My family helped me out. And then that was my job to heal my heart, to find some confidence in myself, not being so stupid at choosing people around me that were not there to support me and trying to get financially secure again and being on the other side of the world from my family that was really super hard so that they were taking phone calls from me and I was just it was just bleak I was crying all the time just absolutely devastated but I can say now I think we're two very different people it wasn't right I wish I had have seen that so I will take responsibility for my part of that I really wish I had seen that I'm so sorry that sounds so devastating especially because you're still only in your mid-20s at this stage yeah I'm guessing yeah and I completely relates that feeling of oh do I not have good judgment it's awful yeah you fail at having good judgment you've failed at marriage I've failed at being able to financially support myself it was just it was one thing on top of the other and you were in London then pursuing your music career is that right yeah okay and tv yeah I was doing and how long were you married for it was like a year and a half together and then it's a while after that before it's actually finalized legally yeah so it wasn't long we were both young but we we'd both lived big lives so I think we thought we knew what we were doing at least I can say that for me yes do you think it was harder for you to forgive him or to forgive yourself harder to forgive myself because I feel like I not only embarrass myself but I embarrass my family as well and that now they had to look after me and that's not how I want our relationship to be I want us to support each other but not have to look after me and pick up the pieces.

23:46Yeah. And I knew how hard that was for my parents being on the other side of the world. Yes. And has that part healed now? Do you feel more self-compassion and less humiliation? Yeah, I feel like it gave me the tools. It gives you a toolbox. I don't want to be that person that makes those mistakes, So I will really try to look out for those things. Yes. Did it make it harder for you to trust future romantic partners? Oh, yeah. Ditto. I mean, I post-divorce had to go through a few like duff ones before finally learning the lesson. Yeah, it takes some time, but it's nice to be able to look back now.

24:35I'm with a gorgeous partner and I absolutely love him. And how difficult was it for you to become financially stable again? Well, I was lucky because my family loaned me money until I got back on my feet. The hard thing for me was that I'd worked for so many years already. I should have been at that position where I could pick and choose stuff. now I couldn't with anything so that was that was difficult but I am one of the lucky ones that I was I was able to have family that could help me out until I could get back on my feet. I know your parents are really private so I don't want to be intrusive but I'd love to know a little bit more about them and who they are how they are as parents you know having created this extraordinary family of minogues who are they and how are they they're very shy they don't like media or spotlight my brother's the same they're very supportive and very grounding I think we're very honest with each other and whether you call on each other's support every day, but knowing it's there is such a huge thing.

25:56Do they think it's quite weird that you and your sister are global superstars? They, I think, probably initially tried to talk us out of it and were very scared of it and rightly so. It's a lot and I think what we didn't see because we were so young is that it affects the whole family, especially what I did. When Kylie really started working Neighbours, she was that bit older. And when I started, I was so young and we didn't have any of the support like the American kids in Mickey Mouse Club had. We didn't have people looking after us to drive us to school. We didn't have people looking after us to help us with our homework.

26:49That was all on our parents so my parents with three kids and um our workload was um five days a week at rehearsals after school and then all day Saturday from like nine till nine that's a lot yeah I think of it now as as a mom of one son yeah and I'm driving him to all of his basketball stuff and I just think I don't even know when you cooked meals or did that because we were always like in a car travelling to some rehearsal that we had to do. But they did it. Even if they didn't understand it, they did it. They did it. They're so supportive. Yeah. Have you ever run into your ex-husband or his family since divorcing?

27:39No, I haven't. No, we've never had a conversation about it. Would you like to? I don't know how helpful it would be because I don't trust how truthful what I hear will be. Maybe it is, but I've done the work on myself and I'm in a place where I'm happy and I just, yeah, I just don't know how helpful it would be. Yeah. It's so interesting, isn't it? Because I look back on my first marriage, my ex-husband, and it feels like it belongs to a totally different lifetime. Different person. Yes. Yes. I'm so grateful that that's not me anymore. Yes. And I guess you need that experience to move on to what, you know, who you're going to become.

28:27Yes. It's an important experience, but tough.

28:44at unexpectedly low prices. Sierra, let's get moving. Race the rudders. Raise the sails. Raise the sails. Captain, an unidentified ship is approaching. Over. Roger. Wait, is that an enterprise sails solution? Reach sails professionals, not professional sailors. With LinkedIn ads, you can target the right people by industry, job title, and more. Start converting your B2B audience today. Spend$250 on your first campaign and get a free$250 credit for the next one. Get started today at linkedin.com slash campaign. Terms and conditions apply. Yeah, so normally at this stage, I would say your final failure, but it's not with you because you're such a generous guest.

29:23But it's a big one. And I'm so, so grateful that you're going to talk about it. And as you put it, it's failing at living up to expectations, specifically where your sister is concerned or where the media perception of your relationship with your sister is concerned. so please tell us about this and from your perspective and why you chose to talk about it enough time has passed and the times have changed so like I was saying before you could never complain about anything back in the day and things that were written that weren't true and nobody would listen to you if you said that it wasn't true or that it was dressing you out or hurting you.

30:09There was no conversations about mental health. And there was certainly, if you were in entertainment, you couldn't say anything about it because you're lucky to do what you do. And why are you complaining about that? But times have changed now. I think with social media, everybody's a part of this because everything you do gets commented on. So it's definitely hard I moved to um to London in 1991 Kylie was so famous here from Neighbours to all of her music with PWL um we were watching news articles back in Australia and it was like the Beatles it was like these cars surrounded by screaming fans and it was wild and she would come home we would be like oh my gosh what is this like tell us about it what's London like and it just was absolutely crazy um and I moved over obviously the audience knew me in England as Kylie's sister sure and coming from a soap opera so didn't know that I've spent my whole life singing and dancing on a tv show in australia so um there was comparisons to my sister very unfavorable for me and there was so many comments um pitting us against each other because that's what was done back then you'd pit women against women because it sold newspapers um and then there were so many comments that were just like, you've started singing because your sister sings.

32:02And it didn't matter how many times I answered this question saying, no, I've actually done, and people didn't even want to hear the answer. So it was tough coming from this childhood of being celebrated for who I was to being in teenage years, because I was 19 when I came over, and trying to be comfortable with myself and my body and what lots of kids talk about on social media now. But the headlines were absolutely brutal. But if I looked at what I was doing, it was like, I'm living this exciting life. I'm in London. I'm doing what I want to do. And I feel like if we're not comparing these sisters, I'm having a pretty successful career.

32:53And I don't know where it's going to go from here, but every day I had to wake up to all of these comments. And I definitely know now that if I hadn't been as strong as I was, it would have been very bad. In what way? I just, I hit low points where I just thought I can't, I can't take this anymore. It's just horrible. It's just so horrible, the comments. And I felt like I couldn't say anything. And I was just so trapped. Part of me wanted to run back to Australia, but the other part of me didn't. I loved being in London. This is where I wanted to be. And I never saw that things would ever change.

33:43It was just so many things back then. It was like you never saw women who were older releasing music and celebrated in film and TV. So it was definitely an age where you knew you were going to be discarded. That was probably around 30. People talked about being 30 like your life is going to end if you are in entertainment. and so I felt like if I run away from this now, I don't have that much longer. This is my time to do this. Yeah. And you mentioned there the waking up every single day to the comments and the headlines. You said in your email to me that it wasn't just about the comparison with music, it was also body comparisons too.

34:35And for anyone who didn't live through them, it's quite difficult to convey what the 90s were like for women, let alone women in the public eye who are being compared to their sister. Yeah. So magazines controlled what beauty was and that there was just a handful of models who were on magazines who are beautiful women. But nobody was celebrated if you were different from that. So there was that and then in the music industry there was a tight control on what artists would release music. You have to look like a pop star. And very, very nasty comparisons to two girls who were sisters who were born with very different body shapes.

35:29We've always just been different. My sister having a better career and being the exact shape of what is beauty and what can be on magazines and what everyone can talk about as being beautiful and I'm not. And, you know, it's pretty beautiful. full on when you're young and you're just being told this over and over and over again. And I just had to get up in the morning and say, am I happy with myself? If all of that wasn't there, if all that noise wasn't there, am I happy with myself? And the answer was always yes. But years later, it was like really shook me. And And once I'd got through kind of an awkward late teenage stage of my body changing shape and then I was into being an adult, my weight had stabilized and my work was keeping my body in this very toned shape because I was dancing and performing and doing gigs all the time.

36:46I was really nervous at photo shoots they're the only cameras I've ever been scared of was still photography because I thought they can see into my eyes of how scared I am and I look at these photos now there's not an inch of fat on me and I would be constantly asking but do I look fat in is this okay that angle we can't shoot at that angle I mean I was like kind of a racehorse at the time my body was so tight you could shoot it from every angle but it was this delayed thing in my brain that I was a very different size to what I was it's really weird because I'm happy with my body at all different sizes and shapes.