Who's That Girl?

Celebrity hasn’t always been a comfortable fit for country girl Sam Armytage. But, in an honest and exclusive conversation with Ingrid Pyne, the Sunrise host suggests that life, love and self-respect all feel so much easier in her forties.

Heading into the city on the ferry for this interview with Samantha Armytage, I get a call from my mum. “Just don’t make it about her weight,” she suggests, which is funny because several months earlier, when Sam was on the phone to her mum, Mrs (Elizabeth) Armytage advised the exact opposite.

So here we are, at a cafe near the Seven Network’s studios in Sydney’s Martin Place, happily discussing Sam’s waistline, a national obsession that the popular breakfast television host has until now stewed, blued and even sued over.

“Wow. A newspaper bullying a woman about her weight – I thought those days were gone!” she tweeted in 2014, after The Daily Telegraph ran a spread on her fashion mishaps. Then, of course, there was the time she set her lawyers onto The Daily Mail after their bullying, bodyshaming jibe at her “granny panties”.

But today the topic of Sam’s weight is very much on the table (alongside a virtuous pot of peppermint tea) because the Sunrise host is chatting exclusively to The Weekly about her new role as Australian ambassador for WW, or Weight Watchers as it used to be known.

Sam, 42, is fully aware that this unexpected partnership could have naysayers accusing her of hypocrisy. Why take on a role that will guarantee scrutiny of her weight after years of chastising the media for doing just that?

“Do you know what? My weight is already scrutinised,” Sam says pragmatically. “I understand there will be more scrutiny that comes with this … but the paparazzi are always already trying to take pictures of [me] where there is a fat roll showing. My mother said to me, ‘Darling, for Godsake, if they are already sitting outside your house taking pictures of you putting the bins out, why not just talk about it?’”