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Daily Telegraph
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Telegraph
Charlie Pickering reveals surprising secret from The Project's early days
Don't miss out on the headlines from Entertainment. Followed categories will be added to My News. Former The Project host Charlie Pickering has opened up about the show's origins in a new interview with – and revealed that he and Carrie Bickmore were never originally intended to take on hosting roles on the show. Pickering speaks to Andrew Bucklow for Monday's episode of the From the Newsroom podcast, reflecting on his time on The Project after news last week that the show will be axed later this month after 16 years on-air. Back when it debuted in 2009, the show was called The 7pm Project and teamed Pickering, Bickmore and comedian Dave Hughes as joint co-hosts. At the time, Hughes was by far the most well-known of the three. 'One thing I remember very clearly about this show: Carrie and I were never meant to host it. It was an accident of showbiz that that happened,' Pickering revealed onFrom The Newsroom. L-R: Dave Hughes, Charlie Pickering and Carrie Bickmore were hosts back when the show was The 7pm Project. Pickering said that Bickmore, who back then had a regular gig as a newsreader on Rove Live, was earmarked for a similar role on The Project, expected to sit at the end of the desk and offer occasional news headlines. Pickering, then an up-and-coming comedian, would sit at the other end of the desk to offer light relief and be a 'regular correspondent' for the show, delivering a couple of stories per week. With the pair locked in as satellite panellists, the search was on for actual hosts – and Pickering and Bickmore were enlisted to help with the audition process. The pair were on hand as the audition process ran 'for two or three days straight,' sitting on either end of the panel as pairs of more famous hosts were brought in to bounce off them during mock episodes. 'I think it was Good Morning Australia – they'd finish recording in the morning in the studio, then we'd move in a desk [and audition hosts],' he said. Pickering said that to keep the auditions consistent, they used the same stories with each auditionee: 'Carrie would do the headline, then I'd chip in and have an opinion … and I got bored doing the same thing all the time, so I'd change my opinion on each story, try to think of different jokes. I was sitting there for two, three days, just trying to make as many jokes and have as many different opinions on the same stories as I could.' Bickmore, too, started to go off-script as the auditions wore on. Pickering says when he was told he needed to smarten up his wardrobe, he realised he was in with a shot as co-host. 'She got bored of reading the same headlines over and over, so she started to get more involved in the conversations [with the panel],' he said. Pickering said that at the end of their final day of auditions, they'd made it through every auditionee and there was still '15 minutes' left before they had to vacate the studio. One of the producers tasked with casting the show suggested they use their final 15 minutes doing a take with just Pickering and Bickmore on the panel. 'This was my Eminem, 'If you only had one shot …' moment,' he said. 'I put the [host's] earpiece in – and I'd never really had to use one before, had never read an autocue before. But I had an advantage: I'd watched every audition, and I knew what had worked and what didn't. I sat in one host's chair, Carrie in the other host's chair … and it just clicked straight away. 'For me personally, it felt like the most natural thing I've ever done. Hosting, hitting the autocue, guiding the conversation. And Carrie was more experienced than I was on TV, so she was really comfortable and we both just had fun,' he said. Once they'd finished, Pickering went home and thought of it as a 'fun' exercise in gaining some technical experience: 'Now I know what it's like to read an autocue,' he remembered thinking. Yes, Ruby Rose was once a regular panellist on The Project.. An hour or so later, he received a call from his manager: The show's producers wanted to continue the audition process with he and Bickmore, this time with just one more host: Dave Hughes. He said that one new directive made him realise he was being considered for a more central role than end-of-desk funnyman. 'They said, 'we've gotta get you to wardrobe, because you can't wear what you're wearing,'' he recalled. 'All of a sudden, I was not visually presentable for the job that they now wanted me for.' The Project debuted on July 20 2009, with Pickering, Hughes and Bickmore remaining the show's central trio until Hughes left at the end of 2013. Pickering exited a year later, with Bickmore eventually becoming the longest-running host in The Project's history, staying with the show until 2022, a year in which Peter Helliar, Tommy Little and Lisa Wilkinson all also left. Pickering, who now hosts The Weekly on the ABC, said it was a 'real shame' that The Project will come to an end on June 27, bringing its 16-year run to an end. 'In my five years, I think I hosted something like 1300 or 1400 hours of television. It was the best place to learn how to make TV.' Originally published as Charlie Pickering reveals surprising secret from The Project's early days
News.com.au
15-06-2025
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
Charlie Pickering reveals surprising secret from The Project's early days
Former The Project host Charlie Pickering has opened up about the show's origins in a new interview with – and revealed that he and Carrie Bickmore were never originally intended to take on hosting roles on the show. Pickering speaks to Andrew Bucklow for Monday's episode of the From the Newsroom podcast, reflecting on his time on The Project after news last week that the show will be axed later this month after 16 years on-air. Back when it debuted in 2009, the show was called The 7pm Project and teamed Pickering, Bickmore and comedian Dave Hughes as joint co-hosts. At the time, Hughes was by far the most well-known of the three. 'One thing I remember very clearly about this show: Carrie and I were never meant to host it. It was an accident of showbiz that that happened,' Pickering revealed on From The Newsroom. Pickering said that Bickmore, who back then had a regular gig as a newsreader on Rove Live, was earmarked for a similar role on The Project, expected to sit at the end of the desk and offer occasional news headlines. Pickering, then an up-and-coming comedian, would sit at the other end of the desk to offer light relief and be a 'regular correspondent' for the show, delivering a couple of stories per week. With the pair locked in as satellite panellists, the search was on for actual hosts – and Pickering and Bickmore were enlisted to help with the audition process. The pair were on hand as the audition process ran 'for two or three days straight,' sitting on either end of the panel as pairs of more famous hosts were brought in to bounce off them during mock episodes. 'I think it was Good Morning Australia – they'd finish recording in the morning in the studio, then we'd move in a desk [and audition hosts],' he said. Pickering said that to keep the auditions consistent, they used the same stories with each auditionee: 'Carrie would do the headline, then I'd chip in and have an opinion … and I got bored doing the same thing all the time, so I'd change my opinion on each story, try to think of different jokes. I was sitting there for two, three days, just trying to make as many jokes and have as many different opinions on the same stories as I could.' Bickmore, too, started to go off-script as the auditions wore on. 'She got bored of reading the same headlines over and over, so she started to get more involved in the conversations [with the panel],' he said. Pickering said that at the end of their final day of auditions, they'd made it through every auditionee and there was still '15 minutes' left before they had to vacate the studio. One of the producers tasked with casting the show suggested they use their final 15 minutes doing a take with just Pickering and Bickmore on the panel. 'This was my Eminem, ' If you only had one shot …' moment,' he said. 'I put the [host's] earpiece in – and I'd never really had to use one before, had never read an autocue before. But I had an advantage: I'd watched every audition, and I knew what had worked and what didn't. I sat in one host's chair, Carrie in the other host's chair … and it just clicked straight away. 'For me personally, it felt like the most natural thing I've ever done. Hosting, hitting the autocue, guiding the conversation. And Carrie was more experienced than I was on TV, so she was really comfortable and we both just had fun,' he said. Once they'd finished, Pickering went home and thought of it as a 'fun' exercise in gaining some technical experience: 'Now I know what it's like to read an autocue,' he remembered thinking. An hour or so later, he received a call from his manager: The show's producers wanted to continue the audition process with he and Bickmore, this time with just one more host: Dave Hughes. He said that one new directive made him realise he was being considered for a more central role than end-of-desk funnyman. 'They said, 'we've gotta get you to wardrobe, because you can't wear what you're wearing,'' he recalled. 'All of a sudden, I was not visually presentable for the job that they now wanted me for.' The Project debuted on July 20 2009, with Pickering, Hughes and Bickmore remaining the show's central trio until Hughes left at the end of 2013. Pickering exited a year later, with Bickmore eventually becoming the longest-running host in The Project' s history, staying with the show until 2022, a year in which Peter Helliar, Tommy Little and Lisa Wilkinson all also left. Pickering, who now hosts The Weekly on the ABC, said it was a 'real shame' that The Project will come to an end on June 27, bringing its 16-year run to an end. 'In my five years, I think I hosted something like 1300 or 1400 hours of television. It was the best place to learn how to make TV.'
The Age
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
The Project is gone – but the battle to attract younger viewers to news continues
When The 7PM Project premiered on July 20, 2009, it promised to do 'news differently'. Its trio of hosts – stand-up comedians Charlie Pickering and Dave Hughes and radio newsreader Carrie Bickmore, who had developed a TV profile on Rove Live – were aged in their 20s and 30s and provided a fresh, youthful alternative to long-standing nightly news shows such as The 7.30 Report (as it was then called) and A Current Affair. Unabashedly pitched at an audience of younger consumers – Millennials then aged in their 20s and early 30s – the first episode featured an interview with MasterChef Australia winner Julie Goodwin, former Australian Idol host James Mathison reviewed storied current affair show 60 Minutes, and Ruby Rose interviewed Sienna Miller for the film GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra. It was, as Dave Hughes and Carrie Bickmore recalled in a 2017 interview for 'stressful'. 'I was absolutely terrified before the first episode because we were doing something that hadn't really been done before,' said Hughes at the time. 'It was serious news with jokes slammed right in the middle of it. It was really different and I was certainly concerned that every time I opened my mouth during that first episode that I was going to ruin my career.' Added Bickmore: 'The only thing I remember is when the show ended, breathing out and hearing Dave Hughes say, 'Well, I think I just ended my career'. I remember thinking, 'Shit, if Dave Hughes is saying that, then what hope have I got?'' It all sounds very quaint now, but at the time The Project broke the mould. It was snappy, funny and with its targeting of issues such as domestic violence, sexual assault, protecting Australian wildlife and banning plastic bags in supermarkets, it hit a nerve few other programs did. It connected with a young audience that was hungry for news, who leaned more to the left and who wanted a bit of comedy and celebrity sparkle thrown into the nightly mix. It also was not alone. In 2013, The Project (it changed its name in 2011) was joined by The Feed on SBS and the ABC's Tonightly with Tom Ballard in 2017, with both mixing news reporting with features and comedy on a nightly basis. Along with the satirical group The Chaser and their various shows on the ABC, these programs catered to a growing youth audience that wanted the news and who had, importantly, yet to be distracted by their smartphones.
Sydney Morning Herald
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
The Project is gone – but the battle to attract younger viewers to news continues
When The 7PM Project premiered on July 20, 2009, it promised to do 'news differently'. Its trio of hosts – stand-up comedians Charlie Pickering and Dave Hughes and radio newsreader Carrie Bickmore, who had developed a TV profile on Rove Live – were aged in their 20s and 30s and provided a fresh, youthful alternative to long-standing nightly news shows such as The 7.30 Report (as it was then called) and A Current Affair. Unabashedly pitched at an audience of younger consumers – Millennials then aged in their 20s and early 30s – the first episode featured an interview with MasterChef Australia winner Julie Goodwin, former Australian Idol host James Mathison reviewed storied current affair show 60 Minutes, and Ruby Rose interviewed Sienna Miller for the film GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra. It was, as Dave Hughes and Carrie Bickmore recalled in a 2017 interview for 'stressful'. 'I was absolutely terrified before the first episode because we were doing something that hadn't really been done before,' said Hughes at the time. 'It was serious news with jokes slammed right in the middle of it. It was really different and I was certainly concerned that every time I opened my mouth during that first episode that I was going to ruin my career.' Added Bickmore: 'The only thing I remember is when the show ended, breathing out and hearing Dave Hughes say, 'Well, I think I just ended my career'. I remember thinking, 'Shit, if Dave Hughes is saying that, then what hope have I got?'' It all sounds very quaint now, but at the time The Project broke the mould. It was snappy, funny and with its targeting of issues such as domestic violence, sexual assault, protecting Australian wildlife and banning plastic bags in supermarkets, it hit a nerve few other programs did. It connected with a young audience that was hungry for news, who leaned more to the left and who wanted a bit of comedy and celebrity sparkle thrown into the nightly mix. It also was not alone. In 2013, The Project (it changed its name in 2011) was joined by The Feed on SBS and the ABC's Tonightly with Tom Ballard in 2017, with both mixing news reporting with features and comedy on a nightly basis. Along with the satirical group The Chaser and their various shows on the ABC, these programs catered to a growing youth audience that wanted the news and who had, importantly, yet to be distracted by their smartphones.
The Guardian
18-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Sam Pang Tonight: Australia's newest talk show is haunted by the spectre of Rove McManus
For a man of such average height, Rove McManus casts a long shadow over Australian TV. Since Rove Live ended in 2009 – probably the last example of a successful talkshow on our screens – the TV landscape has become unrecognisable: the internet got invented, streaming took over, and televisions themselves got bigger but, conversely, much flatter. McManus also manages to loom over Network 10's new talkshow gamble, Sam Pang Tonight. In his opening monologue to last night's premiere, Pang pointed out that this was the network's first late night foray since Rove. In a line that was sadly indicative of the calibre of jokes to follow, Pang then called himself the 'Asian Rove: say ni hao to your mum for me'. Sam Pang, a common and beloved sight on various 10 panel shows, and fresh from a couple of popular stints hosting the Logies, is an understandable choice for host. But Sam Pang Tonight's immediate genuflection to Rove belied an obvious fear that nestles in the breast of the program: is Australia finally ready to break the late night talkshow curse? Since Rove Live's final broadcast, there have been multiple attempts to find that magic again – most of them dying lonely and quickly forgotten deaths. Rove even rebooted his own show in LA, which, unfortunately, ended up Rove Dead. Channel Ten then tried again in 2018 with Saturday Night Rove, which they cancelled after only two episodes. Other, less Rove-centric attempts ensued, such as the ABC's 2018 youth-based comedy talkshow, Tonightly With Tom Ballard, which was cancelled after a year due to poor ratings. Recently in 2023, the ABC tried a talkshow format helmed by Fran Kelly, called Frankly, which was axed after a single season. It feels like anyone who tries to wear Rove's crown suffers a terrible demise. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning Broadcast TV is a difficult market in general right now, with a glut of content spread across hundreds of channels and streaming services, competing with YouTube and other online content. It's hard for a show to make any impact, regardless of its worth. Even in the US – the spiritual home of the late night talkshow – the heavy-hitters have seen a decline in audiences. 'If I were a 25-year-old whose dream was to host a late-night show, I would have some concerns,' Late Night host Seth Meyers told The Town podcast recently. 'But at the same time … they're not watching Late Night, so they're probably not dreaming about doing it.' And Sam Pang Tonight unabashedly follows in the footsteps of the US, with a tongue-in-cheek promo showing Pang watching Colbert and taking notes on the jokes he can plagiarise. The show's format itself clearly took notes too: a cold open (last night's was a sketch with music legend Paul Kelly failing to come up with a theme song), an opening monologue from the host, forced studio laughter, and a stage bedecked in a generic cityscape backdrop. The two guests on Sam Pang Live were where the differences became clear: instead of Hollywood glitterati, we were treated to a long interview with 'Australia's first movie star', the delightful film legend Jack Thompson – perhaps a pessimistic nod to the general age of network TV viewers. The other guest was a trauma doctor, answering comedic questions on topics such as the medical validity of Rambo cauterising a wound with gunpowder. Both interviews felt awkward and too long, with Pang seemingly nervous throughout. Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion Sam Pang Tonight was the most charming when it wasn't imitating the US format, but playing into the self-deprecating humour that both Pang and Australian comedy in general is known for: my favourite segment featured vox pops asking a bunch of young influencers 'do you know who Sam Pang is?', to which the answer was a blanket 'no'. Sam Pang Tonight isn't trying anything new, but a talkshow doesn't really need to. Rove Live, while fun and playful, was essentially the same as its overseas competitors; and if we look to the UK, where the Graham Norton Show seems to only be increasing in popularity, it has a very simple formula of 'interesting guests on a couch'. For late night TV to work you need the mysterious confluence of a talented and charismatic host, the right guests, the right time slot and, crucially, enough time. Sam Pang Tonight might not have it yet, but it's only been one episode: it'll take a while longer to bottle the lightning that makes late night TV magic. Sam Pang Tonight airs on Mondays at 8:40pm on Network Ten and 10 Play
