Profile: Katie Page

By Megan Lehmann
The Weekend Australian Magazine
October 1, 2016

Everyone knows that when Katie Page says jump, you jump. But does this horse know? Is it even listening? The darn thing is not. This horse, a strapping blue roan, is blithely sailing over fences in the historic parklands of La Plaine de Jeux de Bagatelle in Paris with no regard whatsoever for the slim woman standing ringside with her heart in her mouth. It takes a tight turn in the sand of the arena and tenses its unusual bluish hindquarters, little caviar beads of sweat catching the light. There's the takeoff point: now. Tucking up its legs, it clears another jump, and this time the top rail rattles slightly in its cup. The horse tosses its prettily braided mane, and Page flexes knuckles clenched so tightly they'd been turning as blue as the gelding's coat.
Full story: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/weekend-australian-magazine/tight-reins/news-story/95652c6094e51c55d75c4d4ecec39774

Profile: Jacki Weaver

By Megan Lehmann
The Weekend Australian Magazine
August 27, 2016

It's not a giggle; don't call it a giggle. She's 69 years old, a two-time Oscar nominee, a grandmother for goodness' sake, and to say that she giggles, which people insist on doing, makes her sound like a halfwit. "If you're going to say I laugh, please just say I laugh," implores Jacki Weaver, in the kind of frothy, girlish voice where, it must be said, giggles tend to lurk. She thinks a minute. "Maybe I'll allow 'chortle'."
Full story: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/weekend-australian-magazine/jacki-weavers-second-act/news-story/bab8f4640d45b3c71a13e29f8a0c0caf

Profile: Michelle Guthrie

By Megan Lehmann
The Weekend Australian Magazine
May 28, 2016

There are five reasons Michelle Guthrie should not have been handed the top job at the Australian Broadcasting ­Corporation. One: she’s been out of the country for 13 years. Two: she has zero experience in journalism and public broadcasting. Three: she spent 14 years with News Corporation. Four: her most recent job was at tech giant Google. Finally, no woman has held the position in the public broadcaster’s 84-year history. It’s a damning inventory. Surprisingly enough, it was compiled by Guthrie herself, and she didn’t keep it in her head either.
Full story: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/weekend-australian-magazine/we-can-do-better-new-abc-boss-michelle-guthrie/news-story/1041e3dc5786198dcb707ee35621cbb3

Making It

By Megan Lehmann

The Weekend Australian Magazine

May 21, 2016

“You see the palm trees? They tell you anything’s possible.” – Knight of Cups (2016)

Teresa Palmer is breastfeeding her two-year-old son, Bodhi Rain, and talking wistfully of home. “I just FaceTimed my dad in Adelaide and he was showing Bodhi the kangaroo outside,” she says, before going quiet. She can see the Los Angeles palms from her Beachwood Canyon address, high up in the hills, just below the Hollywood sign. The sign and the trees; each is an icon of the city, less an object than a grandiose idea, a beckoning gesture, a promise. Come here, they murmur, come and meet that earthly form of transcendence called fame.
Full story: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/weekend-australian-magazine/teresa-palmer-elizabeth-debicki-margot-robbie-xavier-samuel-in-hollywood/news-story/3af3cb87b9c3137fdfa55417dbea0d56

Profile: Rove McManus

By Megan Lehmann
The Weekend Australian Magazine
May 14, 2016

What do the people want? No one really knows so Rove McManus gives them his all, just to be sure. Gives ’em a double palms-up woot woot, fires off a round of funny voices, cracks a meerkat joke. Pushes back his chair and leaps to his feet in the small glass-walled studio on the 15th floor of ­Sydney’s World Square. It’s Beyoncé’s Love on Top! ­Showing a jaunty disregard for the hour, he launches into a frenzied white-boy dance, windmilling his arms and smiling like he means it. “Feel free to gif and meme that,” he shouts to a young digital content producer who replies with a cheery thumbs-up.

Full story: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/weekend-australian-magazine/rove-mcmanus-talk-show-and-radio-star-is-back-on-the-bright-side/news-story/e1ae961a87a376a68e14bbc351f5ace8

Profile: Essie Davis

By Megan Lehmann
The Weekend Australian Magazine
May 7,2016

They laughed when they went dancing in 1929. They kicked up their heels in smoky haunts and howling glamour dens and everyone dressed with impeccable taste and everything was a riot. In the midst of it all, in between-the-wars Melbourne, a sexually adventurous, independently wealthy lady detective flung herself about, catching ­villains, taking lovers and tossing back gin like water. Phryne Fisher, the strong, complicated heroine of the ABC’s hit period drama Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, may personify joie de vivre but she’s no flibbertigibbet. She is a ­substantial woman and, in bringing her to life, Essie Davis has created a new, very welcome pop culture archetype.
Full story: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/weekend-australian-magazine/essie-davis-star-of-miss-fishers-murder-mysteries-her-time-to-shine/news-story/f6f92b03894a6463f3ec169ab4d5b1db

Tall Story

By Megan Lehmann
The Weekend Australian Magazine
March 26, 2016

Thunk is the sound of a teenager’s head connecting with a door frame constructed by colonial carpenters. The hardwood lintel capping the front door of Reynolds Cottage in Sydney’s The Rocks was built in 1829 and it’s just part of the obstacle course 18-year-old Jackson Raddysh must run each time he visits his father Wes’s workplace. Standing 191.7cm in his port-coloured Vans, Jackson looms over his 180.3cm-tall dad, who runs ghost tours of the former penal colony out of one of Australia’s oldest surviving dwellings.
Full story: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/weekend-australian-magazine/taller-faster-sooner-australias-growth-spurt/news-story/1da72799deb50cc3188d876609e7f67b

Profile: Hamish & Andy

By Megan Lehmann
Sunday Style
July 11, 2015

IT’S a friendship forged over beer and sustained by regular top-ups, so it makes sense to meet in a pub. And because Hamish Blake and Andy Lee are the people’s jokesters, their cross-media stardom based on their broad appeal, it’s logical that the inner-Sydney watering hole be a punters’ paradise of counter meals, rolled-up shirt sleeves and greyhound racing on the jumbo screen.

We settle in for a Friday afternoon session (Carlton Draught – old-school) and a spontaneous game that we’ll call Which Half of a Famous Pair Are You?
Full story: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/lifestyle/sunday-style/can-drive-radio-duo-hamish-and-andy-save-southern-cross-austereo/news-story/abfe68c79caf6d90179ebdb80e8d71e3

Profile: Ian Thorpe

By Megan Lehmann
Sunday Style
November 8, 2015

IT’S a squally, grey day and the tide is coming in. Every third wave crashes over the wall of the empty pool at Bondi Icebergs, spraying Ian Thorpe’s hulking 1.96-metre frame, creating a puddle at his size-17 feet. Thorpe doesn’t flinch. As he poses for photos on the floor of the drained ocean baths, Australia’s greatest swimmer, one of our most popular and successful athletes, is centred, calm in the eye of the storm.
Full story: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/lifestyle/sunday-style/ian-thorpe-on-finding-mr-right-fatherhood-and-life-beyond-the-swimming-pool/news-story/4910d4b8e206cce6c793eab8eae31d9b

Out of Africa

The Weekend Australian Magazine
By Megan Lehmann
December 12, 2015
           
Because life is not a Disney movie, Donna Wilson sometimes gets whacked. Both arms are scarred by jagged claw marks; nips and scratches notch her sturdy torso. Early on, a tiger bite nearly killed her. But this day is about healing. Wilson is hurting on the inside, feeling slightly overwhelmed, and so she’s enlisted Kibulu, 140kg of tawny-furred ferocity and devotion, to help scare the blues away. She buries her face in the lion’s warm coat, angling her cheek to his sandpaper tongue and ruffling his neck scruff as he bumps his huge head against hers. “Good boy,” she coos, as he rests a paw the size of a T-bone steak on her forearm and sucks on her thumb, eyes blinking against the sun.
Full story: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/weekend-australian-magazine/zambi-wildlife-retreat-sydney-its-donna-wilsons-baby/news-story/1da4fc10d6bb47d4a6f7280927aaf15b