Features
‘You better f*cking prepare yourself’: Australia’s favourite unlikely duo Robert Irwin and Julia Morris to battle for Gold Logie
Julia Morris and Rob Irwin have been lighting up Australian screens as the country's favourite unlikely duo. Now, they're battling for the prestigious Gold Logie. Mumbrella sat down with the pair to talk all about it.
When Rob Irwin got the call that he’d been nominated for the Gold Logie, he had his head in a chicken coop.
It sounds like the type of neat publicity story that the Ten promotions department would conjure up, but given that a 14-year-old Robert brought a python onto the Logies red carpet in 2018, Irwin certainly has priors in this regard.
“I was cleaning my chicken coop when I got the call,” Irwin tells Mumbrella, “I answered the phone, went, ‘No way!’, and immediately just called Julia. We were both just over the moon.”
Morris quips that when she got the call: “I had this conservationist cleaning out my chicken coop. As an old chook, I felt this could do with a bit of a sweep….”
Morris and Irwin are on the publicity trail together, both nominated for this year’s Gold Logie, with Ten’s I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here the only program to receive two nods in the feted category. This is Morris’ fourth nomination, and Irwin’s first, capping off a banner year that saw him seamlessly step into a new hybrid genre role: part comedy foil, part reality-show-host, part live TV presenter, and part wildlife expert.
Judging by the Logies nod (he’s also up for the Bert Newton Award for Most Popular Presenter), the Australian Talent Index deeming him the country’s most popular broadcast personality, and his recent win at the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards – for Aussie/Kiwi Legend of the Year, no less – it’s been a very successful year from all angles.
“It’s been amazing,” Irwin confirms. “It’s been a really wonderful, wonderful year.”
As a replacement for Dr Chris Brown, whose easy chemistry with Morris has driven the success of I’m A Celebrity thus far, Irwin initially seemed like an odd choice – at least on paper.
Watching the two interact, it’s clear that the pair have a natural affinity and warmth for each other, and bounce off each other with an easy familiarity that belies their recent meeting.
“He came for a chemistry test with Julia Morris and it honestly took seconds for people to go, ‘Oh wow, here’s our guy'”, I’m A Celebrity’s head of creative production and entertainment Tamara Simoneau told Mumbrella, prior to the 2024 season airing.
Once Irwin and Morris started interacting, “there was just no-one else in the race,” Simoneau said. “He’s so good! He’s so authentic. He knows his stuff. He’s just a joy. He’s a bundle of joy to be around. Julia adores him. They have become such a fun duo already.”
Despite being on television since he was a toddler, this year was very much Irwin’s graduation into the big time – thrust into a primetime hosting role at the age 20, a role that requires sharp comedic chops to even keep in the same universe with Morris.
“I’ve always grown up around it,” Irwin says of performing to the camera. “But comedy is not a medium that I really had gotten into very much.”
He recalled a moment during filming where he fluked a hole-in-one during a challenge. “We had a really fun play off of that. And Julia, you were really kind and just said, ‘Oh, your timing with that joke, or the way you set that up, was just really, really funny’. And I went, ‘Oh, thanks so much, because I don’t do comedy. So that really means a lot coming from you.'”
Morris then reminded him that, far from not doing comedy, “you’re hosting a primetime comedy show. You are doing comedy”.
“I went, ‘Hang on a minute! I actually am,'” admitting that the penny hadn’t dropped until that moment.
“But how amazing that I get to learn and collaborate with one of the greatest comedians — and one of the most authentic human beings — that you just will ever meet. So I just feel like it’s a masterclass for me, honestly.”
Morris insists Irwin “already brought it to the table” and “came fully-formed” comedy-wise, joking she’s become “like a deep background actor who loves to whinge. That’s my special gift”.
As is apparent to anyone whose watched more than a minute of the show, Irwin and Morris have a unique bond.
“It always felt natural,” Irwin marvels. “There was not a single hiccup. I think we both realised when we came into this, this is a collaboration. That’s what this is. We’re both learning together on this incredible new chapter. And it really was joining forces and creating something brand new that I don’t think the world had really seen before.
“You know, this is just uncharted territory,” he says, referring to the two as “kindred spirits”, and Morris as one of his best friends. “What an honour to get to do that with one another. It’s just so cool, you know?”
Morris joked about the “groundbreaking” nature of their team-up. “56 and 20 – where the woman’s not 20? This is some forward-thinking stuff!”
As for the pair turning against each other in a bid to win a gold trophy – that seems unlikely at this stage, with both laughing off any competitive tension.
“I mean, we both just have such a wonderful respect and admiration for one,” Irwin enthuses (as a writer, it’s hard to fight the temptation to put multiple exclamation marks at the end of each of Irwin’s sentences).
“We’re both just so incredibly honoured. It’s just a real sense of excitement that you get to do something like [Gold Logie promotional duties] with someone that you just think the world of.”
Morris admits that campaigning for Logie votes is much better fourth time around.
“I’ve had this experience before by myself and it is a lonely, lonely old, ‘Oh, please, please vote for me’ experience, whereas Robert and I have got to do this together.
“And, I urge voters to send it Robert’s way. Listen, the fact that I’m 56 and still working, I’m happy as a lark.”
And, lest this seem like false modesty, the pair admit they’ve already voted for each other – effectively cancelling both votes out.
For Irwin, just the ability to expand his advocacy reach is achievement enough.
“My whole life, I’ve really just tried to do new things,” he explains. “You know, every time an opportunity presents itself, I really try to do as many different formats as I can – because I have a message that’s behind everything I do, something I believe in so much, which is of course, being an advocate for our natural world, and for the next generation to stand up to the important issues that are facing the planet.
“If I can find a new way to do that, then I’m going to jump at that opportunity.”
Jump he has. And while, as the son of conservationist legend Steve Irwin, he is well aware of the gravity that comes with continuing his late father’s mission, he was unprepared for how his mother Terri would react to the news on his Logie nomination.
“It was funny, because I kind of hit everything at 100%,” he explains – to the surprise of nobody. “But when I got this nomination, and I told my mum about it – you kind of expect the ‘woo’, cheers and party, ‘that’s great!’
“But Mum actually sat me down, very seriously, and we just talked about what it meant, and how Dad would have reacted to it – which kind of took me by surprise, and meant a lot.
“It’s something that I think about at any milestone in my life. I always wish that he was there for that.
“I think when you lose someone that was so intrinsic to the early beginnings of your life, it just naturally happens, where every milestone you just go, ‘I wonder what this person would have thought of it.’ So with Mum, we just started sharing stories, and it was very, very meaningful.”
“For myself, for what I try and do: to continue his mission, I appreciate that greatly. So the reaction from the family was actually very, very special – and meant a lot.”
Lest we end on a sentimental note, Morris quickly chimes in.
“My teenagers sat me down and they said, ‘Mum, you know, Robert’s going to take it.’ And I said, ‘Yes, yes.’ Like, ‘Well, you better fucking prepare yourself.’ I’m like, ‘I’m prepared!’
“So we’re all on the same page in this house too.”
Vote for the 2024 TV Week Logies here.
Subscribe to the daily newsletter
Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
Linkedin
Have your say