The on-air walkout that inspired Georgie Tunny's new chapter

**Chris Spyrou** (0:02)
A LISTENER PRODUCTION Hey, it's Chris Spyrou with you. Welcome to The Weekend Briefing, where we chat with the humans behind the headlines. And this weekend, it's Helen Smith's parting gift to us here at The Briefing, and it's her chat with the wonderful Georgie Tunney. Now, you'll probably remember Georgie from The Project, sharing the desk with Walid Ali and Sarah Harris every night on Channel 10 And you can still catch her on your telly every weekend, with the host and face of Channel 10's Weekend News. In this chat, Georgie tells Helen about the 2am starts early in her career that nearly broke her, the job offer she turned down that changed everything, taking on the amazing race with her fiancé Rob Mills, the real newsroom moment that inspired her debut novel, and how a self-proclaimed people pleaser from the womb finally found her confidence and herself all while being beamed into living rooms right around the country.
And of course, a little later on in the show is The Weeknd List, this weekend with senior producer of The Briefing, Alex Tai, where we recommend what to watch, see, do, eat and listen to. But first, here's Helen's chat with Georgie.

**Helen Smith** (1:14)
Georgie, welcome to The Weekend Briefing.

**Georgie Tunny** (1:16)
Oh, thank you so much.

**Helen Smith** (1:17)
Now, I want to start. You grew up in Brizzy. You first moved to Sydney as a cadet for the ABC.
What drew you to the world of journalism and this wild news cycle that we're currently navigating?

**Georgie Tunny** (1:29)
Oh, wow. Do you know what? I think that when I was younger, I was so obsessed with sport, like beyond obsessed. I wasn't good at it.
I was enthusiastic. But in all honesty, I had an obsession with the Brisbane Broncos and I thought, now how could I make that my day job? And I loved writing and I thought, hang on a second, what if I just became a sports journalist? And that was honestly from that moment, I think I was like, I would have been pretty young. I would have been like eight or nine, like I was like year three or four. And ever since I had that in my mind, I just ran with it. And ever, you know, when you're growing up, people are like, what do you want to be when you grow up? What do you want to do? And I would always just say, sports journalism, like that's just what I want to do. And I kind of just like kept pursuing that as I went through school. My mom was like, you know, I had the grades and she was like, you should be a lawyer. And I was like, nah, too much reading.
Yeah, and then she was like, oh, you should be like a doctor. And I was like, nah, that's shift work.

**Helen Smith** (2:35)
Yeah, okay.

**Georgie Tunny** (2:36)
And then I got into journalism and I was like, oh yeah, okay, so there's quite a bit going on here. But it was also very early on with the cadetship that I was very fortunate enough to get.
I got thrust in front of a camera really, really quickly. And I was doing live crosses very, very quickly. I was broadcasting almost immediately. And I think I got hooked on the adrenaline of it all. Yeah.

**Helen Smith** (2:58)
So you went into a job that yeah, it's a lot of reading and a lot of shift work actually. I also heard that you briefly wanted to be a dentist, but then you thought, no, teeth are actually quite gross. How would I want to do that?
But I want to go to those 2am starts that you used to do at ABC. How did you manage that?

**Georgie Tunny** (3:17)
Looking back, I don't know, in all honesty. I mean, I think about how I felt just in terms of in my body at the time. And with some distance and many years away from it now, the overwhelming answer is not well. Like I wasn't good. But when you're in it, I loved breakfast television. Like I grew up just adoring it. I thought that is a pinnacle for me. If I could be on a set like that with a team like that, like that's all I'd ever want to do.
And so when I was in it, I was actually living, it sounds so cliche, but I was living the dream. I was living my dream. And when you are that tired, your friends that you become very close to all the people that you work with and they're that tired too. So you kind of bond immediately.