Magda Szubanski wants to make sure that everybody knows one very important thing about her induction into the TV WEEK Logies Hall of Fame.
“I have not been awarded this honour because I’ve got the cancer, OK?” she said in a speech recorded for the 65th TV WEEK Logie Awards. “I’m getting this because of 40 years of hard work. You know, lobbying, bribing, threatening… Whatever it took! And, finally, it’s all paid off.”
The beloved comedian and actress announced in May this year that she had been diagnosed with stage four blood cancer and was starting treatment. Very understandably, she wasn’t able to attend the Logies to receive her Hall of Fame honour in person.
“Normally, I don’t come because I just can’t be bothered getting out of my pyjamas,” she explained in the speech. “But, this time, there really is a good reason.”
Magda, 64, is the 35th person and only the fifth woman to be inducted into the Logie Hall of Fame, joining Ruth Cracknell, Noni Hazlehurst, Kerri-Anne Kennerley and Rebecca Gibney.
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She’s been making Australia laugh since 1986, when she and a group of other Melbourne University students, including Marg Downey, Tom Gleisner and Rob Sitch, brought their sketch comedy, The D-Generation, to ABC TV. From there, Magda went on to star in Channel Seven’s hit sketch comedy series Fast Forward.
Her comedy characters, including the chain-smoking Lynne Postlethwaite (“I said, ‘Love’; I said, ‘Pet’,”), giggly reporter Pixie-Anne Wheatley, Wee Mary McGregor, and Chenille from Chenille’s Institute de Beauté and House of Hair Removal, made her famous. She won the Logie for Most Popular Light Entertainment/Comedy Female Personality in both 1991 and 1992.
But her most iconic character was yet to come. Injury-prone netballer Sharon Strzelecki made her debut on sketch comedy series Big Girl’s Blouse, before finding her spiritual home with Kath and Kim in Fountain Lakes. Magda played Sharon in Kath & Kim, opposite Jane Turner and Gina Riley, for four seasons, a telemovie, a film and a 20th anniversary special.
Speaking to TV WEEK in 2022, just before the anniversary special went to air, Magda marvelled that people were still watching the show.
“You know, Gina and Jane and I created those characters initially in 1995, and to have young kids now quoting it and relating and finding it relevant… You can’t predict that; you can’t make it happen,” she said. “But it’s astounding and I’m just so grateful that it’s had this longevity.
“It’s so interesting the number of people who say to me that they come to live here from overseas and Australians just give them the box set: ‘There. You want to understand Australia? Watch this.’”
Magda also starred in the Dogwoman telemovies, and a string of big-screen movies, including her unforgettable 1995 performance as Esme Hoggett opposite James Cromwell and a very polite talking pig in Babe. Speaking in 2020 for the 25th anniversary of Babe, Magda said she wasn’t initially being considered for the role (“I was far too young – I mean, Mrs Hoggett’s the age I am now,”) but she ended up being chosen over older actresses from around the world.
“When we initially filmed it, my character had a Scottish accent because my mum’s Scottish, and I just felt like I was channelling my mother and my grandmother,” she said. “I felt really at home with that role immediately.”
Babe made more than $250 million worldwide and was nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture. But Magda didn’t go to the Oscars herself.
“I was actually with Gina Riley in her kitchen, listening on the radio,” she said.
“Certainly, I went over there after that and had the Hollywood experience and ended up coming back to Australia and thinking, ‘Nah, I’m not much of an LA girl, I have to say. I’m an Aussie. I love Australia.’”
On Valentine’s Day 2012 Magda went on The Project, talking about her experience of being gay and promoting marriage equality. It was the first of many TV appearances she made to encourage a change in Australia’s laws.
Six years later, with same-sex marriage now legal, Magda was cast as marriage celebrant Jemima Davies-Smythe on Neighbours, and officiated at the show’s first gay wedding, between David Tanaka (Takaya Honda) and Aaron Brennan (Matt Wilson).
This was followed by a starring role in dramedy After The Verdict, in which Magda played juror Margie who is engaged to Trish (Virginia Gay).
“If you’d told me when I was 12 years old, and realising I was gay, that one day I would be an advocate for same-sex marriage, and on television playing a lesbian planning to get married, it would have bloody changed my life. If only I’d known the world would change that much,” Magda told TV WEEK.
The work kept on coming: hosting a revival of game show The Weakest Link, playing Bathroom God alongside Melissa McCarthy and her husband Ben Falcone in Netflix series God’s Favorite Idiot (“They are the loveliest people,”) and investigating Australia’s medical issues in Magda’s Big National Health Check.
Then came the devastating cancer diagnosis. But, as well as receiving “world-class care” in Melbourne, Magda has had the good wishes of the nation to help keep her spirits up.
“The love and support that I have felt from the Australian public has just been overwhelming, like a tsunami,” she said in her speech. “And, I have to tell you, it really helps. When I go online and look at those messages, my heart lifts every time. And I feel that much stronger to deal with the cancer.”
As for the news that she was being inducted into the Logie Hall of Fame, Magda described that as a thrill and an honour.
“The Australian TV industry is a terrific industry to work in, and it is chock-a-block full of really good people,” she added.
“There are a few rogues, but mostly really good people. I’ve made a lot of great friends, and I feel very fortunate to have spent 40 years making people – and myself – laugh.
“What a way to be able to make a life and a career!”
Watch the 65th TV WEEK Logie Awards via Channel Seven and 7Plus.
