Sonia Kruger’s dad Adrian was a great lover of television, so when she won television’s highest honour – the TV WEEK Gold Logie Award For Most Popular Personality on Australian Television – at this year’s glittering ceremony – she felt he had something to do with it.
“He especially loved Bert Newton,” Sonia, 57, tells TV WEEK.
Sonia’s father passed in 2015.
“When the Bert Newton Award [For Most Popular Presenter] comes around [each year], I think, ‘Wouldn’t it be lovely if I won this for Dad?’, because they had a bit of a special connection.”
Adrian died in 2015 after a long battle with emphysema.
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“He’d be so proud [of me],” she says. “I think he was here with me tonight.”
Sonia, the host of The Voice Australia and Big Brother, and co-host of Dancing With The Stars, says she never dreamed she’d win a Gold Logie.
“‘But it’s not about winning.'”
“I honestly didn’t think this was going to happen,” she says.
Before Sonia left home to attend this year’s event – held in Sydney for the first time in 37 years – her seven-year-old daughter Maggie wished her luck.
“She said, ‘I know you’re going to win, Mummy.’ And I said, ‘Baby, I hope so – but it’s not about winning,'” Sonia says. “I know she’ll be so happy and will put it on her bookshelf. I’ll never see it again!”
On stage, Sonia told the audience she and her red-carpet co-host Dr Chris Brown had seen a mural that read, “Hosting is not about what you do, it’s about how you make other people feel.”
“And I thought that’s so true,” she says.
The star declares that, with the likes of talents such as Hamish Blake, Shaun Micallef, Leigh Sales, Julia Morris, Mark Coles Smith and Osher Günsberg as nominees, she felt privileged to even be considered for the Gold Logie.
“I wish I’d articulated this better on stage, but the calibre of the group this year: Shaun, who I think is a genius; Hamish, who’s so likeable; Leigh, Julia, Osher, Mark… everyone has such talent, so it’s a real honour,” she says. “I’m incredibly grateful.”
