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Each week, Benjamin Law asks public figures to discuss the subjects we’re told to keep private by getting them to roll a die. The numbers they land on are the topics they’re given. This week, he talks with Julia Zemiro. The Logie Award-winning actor and presenter, 59, is best known for her role on TV comedy Fisk, and shows such as RocKwiz, Julia Zemiro’s Home Delivery, Great Australian Walks and Crime Night.
RELIGION
Religion often gives people their morals and ethics, but you’re not religious. Where did yours come from? My parents. I mean, a day doesn’t go by where I don’t have my mother on one shoulder and my father on the other.
Wait: who’s the good angel and who’s the bad? Well, they swap [laughs]. It’s not that my parents went on about it: I didn’t need that to know what was right and wrong.
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What’s the closest thing to religion for you, then? Nature. I wouldn’t say that I’m a big nature head, but if you see a sunset or a sunrise – or an amazing bug turn into something else – you go, “Well, that’s pretty incredible!”
So if nature gives you the kind of spiritual nourishment other people get from religion, does that mean by hosting Great Australian Walks you’ve become a prophet of some sort? Well, there were a couple of episodes where I burst into tears. We had Indigenous elders, educators or park rangers in every episode and I don’t know how you’re not humbled and moved by being welcomed on country. It feels so spiritual, especially with fire involved. It’s hard not to be moved hearing them speak in their Indigenous languages when so many of these languages have gone now. I’d tear up every bloody time. I was like, “God, I can’t keep doing this, it looks performative” – but it wasn’t.
Are there other moments when you feel spiritual? Well, there’s always a feeling of awe when you go out in front of an audience of 2000 people for RocKwiz, which I was recently lucky enough to do at Hamer Hall [in Melbourne’s Southbank]. You just go, “This was always the dream.”
Younger Julia Zemiro would’ve been like, “Hell, yeah!” [Nods] In the last few years – especially as I get older and start losing people – I’ve started to think, “This will end one day.” So you suck it up and soak it in. You did the hard yards to get this particular show where people laugh and cry because the music moves them, and you go to yourself, “That’ll do, Pig. That’ll do.”
BODIES
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What’s it like, as a public figure, to have so many eyeballs on you – and your body? Well, I didn’t really become well-known until I was 38. If you look at that first series of RocKwiz, I’m quite chubby and I still got the job. My career took off after that. Nowadays, it’s more about getting older. The camera’s not very forgiving.
Ooft, high-definition TV … the technology hasn’t been kind. The first time it happens, you’re like, “What’s going on? That’s not fair!” That’s why I prefer doing live shows. But even going to the Logies, you might have an amazing stylist like Lesley Crawford, the wardrobe mistress at SBS. She’d always find something incredible for you to wear, maybe something vintage and interesting. One year, she went, “Should we just really go for it?” She put me in this vintage Pucci dress and I couldn’t have felt more amazing. I wore a g-string – which I never would, usually – and didn’t wear a bra. I can’t even fathom it now, but I looked incredible and felt amazing: totally free in my body. Then, the very next day, I made TV Week’s worst-dressed list!
‘I looked incredible and felt amazing. The very next day, I made TV Week’s worst-dressed list!’
Oh, f— them! I know! I understand the entertainment of it … well, actually, I don’t, really. But even when you think you’re free, there’s an outside eye that will still say, “That’s not right.”
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The caption could’ve just been: “Julia Zemiro: loving herself sick.” That would’ve been great. But this was, like, 15 years ago. And bloody hell, times have changed so much.
When was the last time you were naked that didn’t involve showering or sex? Actually, deep down, I believe I might be a nudist. My partner is Danish and they’re quite OK with getting naked with everyone. And I would love nothing more than to go to a secluded swimming hole or a private nudist beach and take it all off. My only fear? That someone would take a photo.
DEATH
You lost your father, Claude, in 2019. What helped with the grief? I used to have a ritual where I’d go for a walk at the time he died just to reflect. The useful thing about a church is that it gives you a place where you can go, once a week, to sit quietly and think about things. I don’t have that place, so it’s just me, in my head, wherever I’m walking, early in the morning. Because sometimes those moments of grief don’t come on the anniversary: they come at different moments.
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So these rituals have helped you? [Nods] Ritual helps – but, for me, the one that you make up, not the one that’s imposed on you by people saying, “It must be done this way.” And because he was a chef, it’s also in cooking. I’ll buy something that he would’ve talked a lot about. Artichokes, definitely: he and Mum used to eat them in France and save the best ones for me.
Any funeral requests? Funny speeches, please, and good stories and dancing. Some ABBA, too: Dancing Queen, without doubt. And please, as you walk out through the reception, just keep moving and dancing because movement gets emotion out. I want people to just hear the two beautiful voices of Frida and Agnetha piping up through – not the church – the theatre. It’ll have to be in a theatre.
Julia Zemiro appears at Brisbane Festival on September 12 as part of RocKwiz Rocks Brisbane. Season 2 of Crime Night, hosted by Zemiro, returns to the ABC on September 30.
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Benjamin Law is a writer, presenter, screenwriter and playwright.Connect via X or email.AdvertisementAdvertisement