Amanda's fresh start: ‘I'M LIVING LIFE WITH PASSION'

The former AM Show presenter is all aglow after a proposal and an exciting new job that doesn’t entail getting up at the crack of dawn!

- Wendyl Nissen

It’s been just over a month since Amanda Gillies signed off from The AM Show after five years of early starts – and she looks amazing. Gone are the designer outfits, and studio hair and make-up, and instead there is a relaxed woman in a simple black singlet dress, with her hair tied back in a classic, smooth ponytail and if there is any make-up on, it’s what beauty editors call “the natural look”.

She looks like a woman who has had a wonderful night’s sleep and woken up to all the joys of the world. Which she agrees is true after five years of getting up in the middle of the night.

“I had been waking up at 3.30am in the middle of the night for five years and I was pretty sure it would take me weeks to get back to a normal sleep pattern, but it took – oh – one day. I left work on the Friday and by the Monday my body was saying, ‘Yep, we’re good to go.’”

After what she describes as a “crazy” year, the journalist finds herself pleasantly surprised to be in such a peaceful place.

Last year, when she celebrated 20 years as a journalist at Three (now Discovery), she made the decision to move on from The AM Show and the early starts, and return to the job she loves – good, old-fashioned journalism where she can file long-form stories and get back to the job she started doing two decades ago. As a Newshub National Correspondent, she’ll be covering and breaking stories.

“To be honest, I’m a bit nervous about going back out into the field. I’ll certainly have to rein it in. There will be no dancing and singing, and there will be a lot of relieved people in New Zealand about that!