Once upon a time, today’s photoshoot would have been pure torture for Magda Szubanski. The preening, the trying on of clothes, the posing – all anathema to someone who had long tried to hide her true self. But today, at 61 years of age, she’s having the time of her life.
“As I get older I give a little bit less of a stuff,” she says as she swirls and twirls for our cameras. “I’ve started to just be playful and have fun with it. And the stylist always brings some beautiful clothes which I snap up, so it’s a replacement for schlepping around a shopping centre for me. I’ve really just relaxed into it a little bit more.”
This attitude is something that was hard to come by for Australia’s favourite funny woman. Moving to Melbourne at the age of four, she was the youngest of three. And her family, she says, “came from terrible trauma on both sides”. That trauma trickled downwards – something that made sense when, at 36, Magda learned the truth of her father Peter’s past: After Germany invaded his homeland during WWII, when he was 15 years old, he became an assassin for a counterintelligence branch of the Polish resistance movement.
Meanwhile, as a pre-teen Magda was herself nursing a secret: she wasn’t swooning over the handsome men in the Golden Age of Hollywood movies she adored, it was the leading ladies who were making her heart skip a beat. And in the 1970s homosexuality was not only considered taboo, it was still a crime.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة August 2022 من The Australian Women's Weekly.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة August 2022 من The Australian Women's Weekly.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Hitting a nerve
Regulating the vagus nerve with its links to depression, anxiety, arthritis and diabetes - could aid physical and mental wellbeing.
Take me to the river
With a slew of new schedules and excursions to explore, the latest river cruises promise to give you experiences and sights you won’t see on the ocean.
The last act
When family patriarch Tom Edwards passes away, his children must come together to build his coffin in four days, otherwise they will lose their inheritance. Can they put their sibling rivalry aside?
MEET RUSSIA'S BRAVEST WOMEN
When Alexei Navalny died in a brutal Arctic prison, Vladimir Putin thought he had triumphed over his most formidable opponent. Until three courageous women - Alexei's mother, wife and daughter - took up his fight for freedom.
The wines and lines mums
Once only associated with glamorous A-listers, cocaine is now prevalent with the soccer-mum set - as likely to be imbibed at a school fundraiser as a nightclub. The Weekly looks inside this illegal, addictive, rising trend.
Jenny Liddle-Bob.Lucy McDonald.Sasha Green - Why don't you know their names?
Indigenous women are being murdered at frightening rates, their deaths often left uninvestigated and widely unreported. Here The Weekly meets families who are battling grief and desperate for solutions.
Growing happiness
Through drought flood and heartbreak, Jenny Jennr's sunflowers bloom with hope, sunshine and joy
"Thank God we make each other laugh"
A shared sense of humour has seen Aussie comedy couple Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall conquer the world. But what does life look like when the cameras go down:
Winter baking with apples and pears
Celebrate the season of Australian apples and pears with these sweet bakes that will keep the midwinter blues away.
Budget dinner winners
Looking for some thrifty inspiration for weeknight dinners? Try our tasty line-up of low-cost recipes that are bound to please everyone at the table.
