After 25 years working for the Seven Network, including 14 years hosting their flagship breakfast show Sunrise, Melissa Doyle has joined her once fierce rival Nine — and is loving every minute of it.
With her kids out of the house and herself out of work, long-time Seven presenter Melissa Doyle was facing an uncertain future. But the acclaimed journalist weathered the changes and has emerged on the other side of 50 as an author, emcee, podcaster, radio host – and with a new job at a different network.
For the longest time, television presenter Melissa Doyle had mastered the art of multi-tasking. She calmed the nerves of a nation during major news events while she and husband John created a cosy home for their two children to thrive in. As such, she earned public accolades and private cuddles all in equal measure.
But that balance has been tested of late. After 25 years at the Seven Network, Doyle finished up there in in August 2020. Then her son left for university in the US and now her daughter has graduated from high school, effectively bringing an end to two decades of hands-on mothering while working full-time in the news business.
“It’s a bittersweet feeling,” she confides to Stellar – at least about the parenting side of things.
“Every single day, every part of your existence has been focused on making sure they’re healthy, happy, fed, warm and hugged. You know they have to spread their wings and you want them to do it, and you know you’ve done a good job, but you just want to be with them because they’re fantastic and funny.”
Doyle jokes that 20-year-old Nick moving to Seattle means Talia, 18, is prohibited from leaving the nest.
In reality, she’s thrilled for the adventures that lie ahead for her children, who were regularly referenced during her long tenure on Sunrise.
“I love what I do and I’ve always said to them, ‘I just want you to feel the same, so go for it,’” she explains.
“You just want them to be happy and to find something that gives them that buzz of satisfaction, interest and excitement.”
Finding that buzz again in her own career, however, has required Doyle to reset her goals. Drawing upon a latent well of energy in the past 18 months, she has added podcasting to her portfolio, has two books in the pipeline, hosts a radio show on Smoothfm, accepts emcee gigs and has stepped back into television, this time for the Nine Network.
She’s been able to take on these new challenges by accepting that, like many women of her age and experience, she has had to overcome the crisis of confidence that happens when work or mothering roles suddenly shift. And she credits the multiple women she has interviewed on her podcast, Age Against The Machine, for guiding her through it.
“A lot of women struggle to redefine themselves and fight with changes in their looks, and while they still have so much to contribute, they don’t necessarily recognise it,” Doyle says.
“Experience does matter, so it’s about encouraging them to redefine their purpose. It’s about saying, ‘OK, this is who I’ve been, this is what I’ve done, what do I do now?’”
The answer for Doyle, who turns 52 on Tuesday, is to jump at opportunities to tell stories that interest her in any medium she can.
Along with her podcast, she’s been writing a book on ageing, and in the non-fiction work, 15 Seconds Of Brave, she chronicles the experiences of 10 people who have gone through something extraordinary and reveals what they’ve learnt.
“I just love hearing from amazing people and what it was that made them so strong,” she says.
That same curiosity led her to narrate the docuseries Australia Behind Bars (airing Thursdays on the Nine Network), which takes viewers behind the scenes of the nation’s biggest prisons.
“Through the pandemic, a lot of us just had to bunker down and worry about our immediate families,” she says.
“But for those like these prison guards, they had to make sure their prisoners were safe. You see the empathy and kindness they show and why they want the system to be better.”
Headlining the insightful series places Doyle firmly in Nine’s stable of talent and repositions her as a gun for hire. While she doesn’t actually have a desk or a car space at the network she competed against for so long, she admits she’s enjoying her new company.
“It’s a new chapter,” she tells us.
“Everyone I’ve been working with so far has been lovely and welcoming and warm.”
And if Doyle’s new and varied roles don’t seem as high-profile as her years alongside David Koch on a top-rated breakfast show, they offer her broader opportunities for storytelling and, she says, increase her capacity to listen and gain perspective.
She needed those traits during last year’s lockdown when Talia was going through Year 12, using them to acknowledge her daughter’s challenges and disappointments – including missing out on the end-of-school celebrations – while discouraging her from dwelling on it: “We just tried to play it down and got her to see how lucky she was being in a nice house with everything she needed to study.”
Working from home also allowed Doyle to be open with her kids about the uncertainties of her own career.
“It’s been important to be honest and say to them, ‘Hey, I’m having a good day’ or ‘This has happened and it’s really crappy’,” she reveals.
“I try to be an example to them that if one door closes, you change direction and open another one.”
And while she misses her son, she has happily filled the void he left behind with another family member of sorts. Like plenty of others, she caved to a pandemic pet – a border collie puppy called Maggie.
“There’s something so simple and grounding about walking around the neighbourhood with a dog,” she says.
While she’s hoping the family’s next adventure will take them to the States for Nick’s 21st birthday in April, she’s bracing herself for Talia’s potential semester in Italy to study design. Doyle laughs, then sighs, about it all.
“Mostly, I miss holding their hands,” she says.
“I loved that little hand reaching out for yours when you crossed the street. But I’m pretty glad to see them head off on their own.”
