Karl Stefanovic has lifted the lid on almost 20 years helming Today, sharing his candid opinions on each of his high-profile co-hosts including Tracy Grimshaw, Jessica Rowe, and Lisa Wilkinson.
The Channel Nine star, 50, made the revelations in a wide-ranging interview with Stellar magazine’s Something to Talk About podcast on Sunday.
Karl joined Tracy on the breakfast program in February 2005 and said he ‘wasn’t overly nervous,’ but ‘I just knew that I didn’t know enough.’
The father-of-four revealed she’d once told him to ‘stop being so needy,’ while he’d been asking her advice about an interview.
‘It was a great lesson, because I didn’t feel like I was,’ he said.
‘But it’s a tough business. You’ve got to be self-sustained, you can’t rely on anyone else. So that was fantastic, particularly when she just deserted me and I cried.’
Today host Karl Stefanovic, 50, has lifted the lid on what he really thinks about all his former co-hosts as the cover star of Stellar magazine, Sunday February 2
Karl Stefanovic said there is no ‘ill will’ between him and his longest-serving co-host, Lisa Wilkinson. Pictured: Karl and Lisa at the Logies in 2015
Tracy announced she was leaving Today to replace Ray Martin as host of A Current Affair – one year after Karl joined the show.
‘I remember I was late for work because I’d left my shoes at home – I ended up getting Ray Martin’s shoes,’ he recalled of the day he got the bombshell news, and the characteristically cheeky way she told him.
‘So I came into the studio like, “Hey, Trace, look at this. I’ve got Ray Martin’s shoes.”
‘Tracy leans across and goes, “You got his shoes? I got his job.” That’s how she broke it to me. She denies that story, but it’s 100 per cent accurate.’
Jessica Rowe was appointed to replace Tracy and in hindsight, Karl can admit in her short-lived time with the network, she was ‘pilloried.’
‘It was shocking, the treatment that she had. She was called the most heinous things, and I was just trying to survive,’ Karl said.
The mum-of-two was sacked from Today after returning from maternity leave, and her messy departure has made headlines for years to come — thanks to shocking allegations then-Nine boss Eddie McGuire had told executives he wanted to ‘bone’ (fire) her.
‘I’ve apologised to Jess since then, but at the time I just didn’t know how to navigate my own future, let alone be there for her in the way that I should have,’ Karl said.
Jessica Rowe replaced Tracy Grimshaw as Karl Stefanovic’s Today co-host in 2006
Karl Stefanovic admits Jess Rowe was ‘pilloried’ by the Nine Network and then replaced by Lisa Wilkinson (right) in 2007
Lisa joined Channel 10 in 2018 after an infamous pay dispute at Nine when she discovered her co-host, Karl Stefanovic , was earning significantly more than her
Jessica moved to rival Network Ten and was replaced by Karl’s longest-serving co-host, Lisa Wilkinson in 2007.
‘As I get older, I don’t want to waste any of my life thinking about negative parts when you’ve had a long time with someone,’ Karl said. ‘That’s hard to do. But this is what I will say about Lisa: [I] genuinely adored working with her.’
‘I found her to be an incredibly interesting, intelligent, funny woman.’
Lisa joined Channel 10 in 2018 after an infamous pay dispute at Nine when she discovered her co-host, Karl Stefanovic, was earning significantly more than her.
By that time, the breakfast TV darlings had been helming the program together for a decade.
‘There’s no ill will,’ Karl said firmly. ‘I think at the end of the day, these on-air relationships? It’s not normal.’
‘You get up at three in the morning. You go to work. You see someone in the way that only their partner would.Without makeup, and that goes to the dudes as well.
‘I’ve got my Vegemite pyjamas on and bare feet. It’s not normal to have a conversation at that hour of the day.’
‘It’s a miracle that people go beyond three years. We did 10 years. Some marriages don’t last that long,’ Karl continued.
‘So as far as I’m concerned, for us to have gone ten years, I think woo hoo to us! And I will compartmentalise that as a great period of my life, in all honesty.’
After two years of gardening leave to the tune of $1.7million a year, Lisa’s time at Channel Ten ended with a whimper over the Christmas holidays.
Her multi-year contract lapsed on New Year’s Eve and wasn’t renewed.
Everything was going well when she signed a new deal with Ten in 2021.
But just a year later, she stepped down as host of The Project – her sole on-air role – citing the toll of ‘relentless, targeted’ media coverage.
In the two years since vanishing from our screens, she continued to collect a monthly paycheck from Ten, commercial TV’s forgotten child, despite industry-wide cutbacks.
Wilkinson has since since been slowly building back her public image.
It follows news that Lisa wants to make a return to TV screens following months of inaction and five tedious weeks spent in a courtroom, sources say.
The Channel 10 star and former darling of breakfast TV is keen to get back to delivering more ‘blockbuster interviews’ in the New Year, friends told the Weekend Australian.
Wilkinson quit The Project in November 2022 and despite remaining on the Ten payroll until the end of 2024, she hasn’t appeared on the channel for over a year.
Despite her lengthy hiatus from the network, Wilkinson has remained in the public eye through her role in a highly-publicised defamation trial.
She was embroiled in a case with Bruce Lehrmann who was suing Network 10 and Wilkinson over an interview with Brittany Higgins that was broadcast on The Project and online.
