“It's Like a Circus

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She rarely grants interviews. Now Fifi Box opens up about being a gossip magnet “It’s like a circus. I’ve had every headline there is”

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STR08JUL18V001 1 2/7/18 10:09 am cover FIFI OUT OF THE BOX For the first time in years, TV and radio host Fifi Box is the one being interviewed– and she is candid about being a tabloid magnet, raising her daughter right and becoming an early riser. But about that love life…

Photography DAMIAN BENNETT Styling KELLY HUME Interview SIOBHAN DUCK

ifi Box has been pregnant 32 times in the FM breakfast radio show, nor during her Tuesday night past five years, involved in several love appearances on Network Ten’s The Project. triangles and is now secretly dating Yet Box makes a pay cheque by talking – she has to fill 15 Russell Crowe. Next week, she is liable to hours of airtime each week on the radio – and is a self-described start feuding with one of her radio show “chatterbox”. Still, she is surprisingly tight-lipped when co-hosts, irk her bosses at The Project pushed to discuss the inner workings of her personal life. by jetting off to Europe without warning Before sitting down with Stellar for her first proper interview or abruptly dump Crowe for 21-year-old in years, Box, 41, makes it clear she will not be spilling about Australian model Jordan Barrett. boyfriends, past or present. “I would spend my life putting out It’s anyone’s guess, spot fires if I addressed every rumour,” she really – and Box says she is just as surprised says. “It becomes a mouth to feed.” This as the rest of Australia by the near-daily has been her policy since Beatrix Belle Box Fheadlines she manages to make. “I don’t came into the world. “I didn’t used to be so “ understand the interest,” Box tells Stellar. I do not private. Being a mum was a game-changer “I’m just not that exciting. I have never – before that I was a bit frivolous. I needed even met [Russell Crowe]!” She lets out a understand to set parameters to protect her.” dramatic, exasperated laugh. “I get a shock Of course, that decision was like a red some Monday mornings when I wake up the interest. rag to a bull for the paparazzi, who were to another ridiculous magazine cover.” eager to discover the identity of Trixie’s The stories came tumbling forth, Box I have never father. To this day, Box has never officially reckons, after her daughter Trixie was born confirmed that ironman Grant Kenny is in 2013. “It was like a circus,” she says. “And even met Trixie’s dad. Asked if she ever considered I couldn’t control it. I am not kidding – I a tell-all to put an end to years of whispers, have had every headline.” Russell Crowe!” Box nods. Then she points out even that If Crowe and Box aren’t a couple, they wouldn’t guarantee privacy. “I have had do have at least one thing in common: times when I’ve gone on the record or each has been driven to the extremes clarified something and then fast-forward of frustration by coverage of their love lives. Crowe likes a couple of weeks and it actually doesn’t matter.” to vent his spleen on Twitter; Box merely disengages. There Box doesn’t have the same qualms about sharing secrets are no confirmations or denials from her camp. She does with close friends and colleagues. Her Project co-host Carrie not bother to discuss the rumours on her top-rating Fox Bickmore marvels at Box’s energy, telling Stellar that “she comes

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in having been up since 4am and to the hospital where my poor dear always has a smile on her face. No granny was passing away. I then matter how tired she is, whether made the decision that I would she has a cold, or has been up with control this because, from a young her daughter during the night, she age, she has had strange men is positive and friendly and warm. following her down the street. It’s nice to have a true friend in the “We couldn’t walk out the front industry like Fifi.” door. So now I share so she doesn’t Retired AFL player Brendan Fevola have to be followed or stalked or have points to her aid in helping him men confront her with a big camera.” transition to his gig as a radio host. The Box isn’t opposed to sharing some colleagues have bonded over parenting intimacies with her listeners. She was one of the daughters – he and his partner Alex are first entertainers to detail being sexually assaulted expecting their fourth later this year – in her workplace, revealing on her radio show last and intense intrusions into their year that she had been pushed forcefully into the personal lives. “It’s all part of the crotch of a much older international celebrity territory but I know it can be tough,” during an interview over a decade ago. “I told this he says. “It’s good to have that support.” story before the #MeToo movement. It was really Box agrees. “I am pretty thick- just talking through an incident that concerned skinned,” she says. “But I have friends me… I was looking back on my younger self, wishing who really struggle with it; it riddles them I’d had the courage to speak up,” she tells Stellar. with anxiety. Within my group, a lot of us are “I felt that young people needed to hear that it’s happy when one of the others takes one for the OK to stand up to someone violating your personal team and is on a magazine cover. We’ll text each space – regardless of their status or influence. In my other and say, ‘Hey, thanks!’” case I was young, inexperienced and felt powerless. It’s not always a laughing matter. Box recalls I also naÏvely thought I should be a good sport and being hounded by photographers when she was laugh along with the behaviour of a very famous fresh out of hospital with her newborn daughter. man because nobody around me was intervening “My intention was to not post photos of her on or condemning his actions.” She says it resulted in Instagram because she didn’t buy into [fame], many listeners of both genders phoning in with but when she was five days old we were followed their own tales of mistreatment.

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uch like Jennifer Aniston, Box expert Matthew Hussey. Box is filled with admiration for exudes the kind of girl-next- Hussey’s skills, but hastens to add he hasn’t helped her door charm that keeps her onside sharpen her own pick-up prowess as she, quite simply, with fans, popular with her doesn’t put herself out there. peers and a go-to tabloid cover No Tinder. No internet dating. Box says she instead lives girl. Also like Aniston, when vicariously through her friends and that swag of shows she’s she’s snapped at the wrong addicted to watching to learn about the new rules of romance. angle or in an unflattering Her own relationships, she confesses, have been forged outfit, speculation ramps up. at work or through mutual friends – and at times when For what it’s worth, Box tells Stellar, she is not opposed to she wasn’t looking for love. She says she has never been in Mmore children. But, she says, “It’s something I don’t actively a mad rush to settle down, admitting she has often put her think about. A great friend told me it’s really important to career before her love life. just be grateful for what you’ve got. And I really am. I am also But Box’s career, in many ways, may always be her first open to opportunities and what is around the corner.” love. Her dreams of being on radio were forged in the pre- With a young daughter and a hectic career to manage, Box digital era, and her father still has a cassette tape she made has to be picky about her projects. But when the Seven as a kid, on which she plays a successful radio DJ she calls Network offered her a gig hosting its new reality show The Jane Watson. To this day, she remains amused she chose Single Wives, she couldn’t refuse. “The dating-show genre is such an innocuous name. my guilty pleasure. I watch them all. These people who put Box was a shy child, but her talents were recognised when themselves out there are amazing.” she was made school captain at Tintern Grammar in The Single Wives follows four previously married women Melbourne’s outer eastern suburbs. Her behaviour was learning to date again with the help of British relationship sometimes less than perfect, but she got away with it by

“I didn’t used to be so private. Being a mum was a game-changer”

FIFI WEARS (here and previous page) Peter Pilotto blouse, myer. com.au; Carl Kapp skirt, carlkapp.com; Oscar de La Renta earrings (worn throughout), pierrewinter finejewels.com; Zara shoes, zara.com/au OTHER PHOTOGRAPHY: INSTAGRAM/FIFIFEVBYRON, INSTAGRAM/FIFI_BOX, NETWORK SEVEN. HAIR AND HAIR SEVEN. NETWORK INSTAGRAM/FIFI_BOX, INSTAGRAM/FIFIFEVBYRON, PHOTOGRAPHY: OTHER CLICKONFURNITURE.COM.AU FURNITURE SOFA, CLICKON RAMMAN. AND GEORGIA MARTIN VICTORIA MAKE-UP:

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STR08JUL18N010 10 2/7/18 12:32 pm talking fast and turning IN HER HAPPY PLACE the week ahead. “I am not that mum,” she says, giggling. on the charm for her (from top) Fifi Box (at right) hosts “I’m the, ‘What do you want to order from Uber Eats?’ mum.” upcoming dating show The Single teachers. She later lasted Wives; broadcasting a special She’s also the type who is hell-bent on fostering a six months studying arts at episode of her Fox FM radio show positive sense of body image and self-confidence in her The University of Melbourne from Bali with Brendan Fevola; young daughter. “I am a great warrior for women just before moving elsewhere playing with daughter, Trixie, and being themselves,” she says. “I want [Trixie] to embrace for a different performing rumoured father Grant Kenny. herself; I don’t want her having some alien-type arts program. At one stage she considered acting, but after being rejected by NIDA she took up commercial radio broadcasting. She cut her teeth on regional radio before taking a huge gamble on the offer of a single late- night broadcast – without pay – on Sydney’s Triple M. Box packed up her Ford Festiva and hit the road. She crashed on a friend’s floor near the beach and spent weeks working pre-dawn shifts, getting coffees and answering phones. One day, it happened: she was asked to fill in for Amanda Keller, who had gone on maternity leave. That soon led to a drivetime position and the eventual realisation that maybe she could make a fist of radio after all. Fifteen years later, Box is still with the Austereo network, but she’s moved back to Melbourne where she’s been part of the city’s highest-rating FM breakfast team since 2014. After originally sharing the airwaves with Dave Thornton, today she co-hosts alongside Fevola and Byron Cooke. FIFI WEARS “I see it as such a brilliant opportunity to wake up with Scanlan Theodore a city,” she says. “It’s like a living organism, a breakfast dress, scanlan radio show. It moves with the topics of the day and the theodore.com relationship I have with the listeners and also with the guys I work with [is special]. I am in a sweet spot – I work with two of my best mates, which makes every morning. The downside is I am sleep-deprived and it’s hard to have energy for other people, so I have to be really careful where I apply “I’m a great warrior and channel my energy in life.” To keep on schedule, she relies on a devoted nanny who reports for duty at 4.30am each weekday so Box can make it for women simply to the studio on time. After the broadcast, and while the rest of Melbourne is just getting to work, Box usually heads into being themselves” meetings before collecting Trixie from school in the afternoon. “Then we play and we have play dates [with other children],” she says. “I want to be a very present mum. Kardashian figure. I want her to be herself. And look, I do things The only problem with the hours and the job is that I have for my own wellbeing. I do Pilates. I have a personal trainer. a child who is a night owl. It’s killing me. I don’t know why I am happier now – in my personal life, in my body, in my face – but she’s like a party animal.” – than ever. All the insecurities and concerns that maybe Aside from her nanny, Box also relies on a close network of wreaked havoc on me in my teens, my 20s and even my early friends and family to help raise Trixie. And no, she is not 30s… they have just gone. I have never been more content.”

OTHER PHOTOGRAPHY: INSTAGRAM/FIFIFEVBYRON, INSTAGRAM/FIFI_BOX, NETWORK SEVEN. HAIR AND HAIR SEVEN. NETWORK INSTAGRAM/FIFI_BOX, INSTAGRAM/FIFIFEVBYRON, PHOTOGRAPHY: OTHER CLICKONFURNITURE.COM.AU FURNITURE SOFA, CLICKON RAMMAN. AND GEORGIA MARTIN VICTORIA MAKE-UP: spending her weekends pre-preparing and freezing meals for The Single Wives premieres 7.30pm, July 18, on the Seven Network.

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