Former Sunrise host Samantha Armytage believes she would be cancelled by now if she had stayed on the Channel Seven breakfast show.
During an interview on her podcast Something To Talk About with her guest and former TV rival Karl Stefanovic, she spoke about the culture shift and how it would have impacted her public image.
“I learned a few hard lessons,” Sam told Karl. “There were some things I said on air that I probably would be cancelled for now that I got away with.”
The 45-year-old speculated that even though she would never have said anything too controversial, it wouldn’t have fit with the times.
“I shouldn’t say got away with because they weren’t outrageous, they were perhaps just not popular or conservative so they would be shouted down now,” she said.
As it was fitting for an interview with the Today Show host, who infamously turned up to set drunk after a big night at the Logies, Sam revealed she had also turned up to work after a few drinks.
“I mean, hello, we’ve all been on air drunk,” she said, before telling Karl about the time she’d had a few at a “lunch” before reporting outside Buckingham Palace for the Queen’s Jubilee.
“I was sneaky, I didn’t get written up in the papers – nobody knew,” she asserted.
In May, Lisa Wilkinson reflected on Karl’s drunk moment 13 years later while appearing on Gus Worland’s Not An Overnight Success podcast.
“Without looking at Karl, each of us could tell who was going to speak now,” the 62-year-old said. “We could just feel each other in our peripheral vision and I could feel that he was breathing in.”
The Project host went on to recall Karl slurring the words “good morning to you”.
Laughing, she said: “My first thought was, ‘is he still on his way up the mountain or are we coming down the other side now? Or are we sitting on The Summit?’ I had no clue.”
“And it was only through him sadly continuing to try to talk that I could get a reading on where he was. And I think quite literally at that point, we were just a couple of metres from The Summit, and then for the rest of the three-and-a-half hours, we were coming down the other side.”
Lisa also described Karl as “very funny that morning”.