The Weakest Link: Magda Szubanski is ready to play a new game

Magda Szubanski might be best known for making us laugh – as Mrs Hoggett in the movie Babe, the legendary sport-loving Sharon Strzelecki in Kath & Kim, with an Australia Post stamp to prove it – and in a new role as a game show host in a reboot of The Weakest Link the cheekiness continues.

“It’s like a quiz show combined with Survivor,” says Szubanski, already two weeks into filming the 10-episode season, which airs soon on Nine.

“I’ll be giving it a cheeky stir as the host, and it’s really the gamesmanship that makes it fun. And who doesn’t love a general knowledge quiz show, you can never have enough of it.

“I love that the show is made in Melbourne, and I have a regular routine again.”

Born in Liverpool, UK, Szubanski migrated to Australia as a five-year-old with her Polish-Scottish parents and two siblings – arriving in Bayswater in 1965 during a stinking summer heatwave that she still remembers.

“Melbourne is where I have my deep roots,” Szubanski says.

“Being dislocated when I was five meant that a part of me never wants to establish a new life anywhere else. This is really home. Close family friends I have known since I was five and 10 years old are still in my world, and I love that connection.”

Szubanski might be one of Australia’s more successful comedians, showing us her funny side since the ’80s, but away from the gags exists a quiet and shy human. Her book Reckoning, released in 2015, is proof of just that, articulating her experience of intergenerational trauma, coming out as a lesbian and accepting herself after years of therapy.

She doesn’t shy from showing her feelings in public either: brought to tears in an interview with Andrew Denton in 2018 when speaking of the loss of her mother, while a Wheeler Centre talk saw her speak candidly about weight issues, identity, her father’s assassin past in WWII and protecting Jews and finding a way to accept herself despite the internal and external criticism that came her way.

“I was one of the fortunate people who could have that conversation with my father about the war and write about it.

“I love writing, and my mum and dad were great storytellers and really funny. I guess it’s just me carrying on that tradition, really. I didn’t shy away from the fact that I am a fat lesbian and short child of a Polish, Irish, Scottish, Italian and the daughter of an assassin in the story either,” she laughs.

Her comedy footprint began in the mid-’80s with The D Generation. Success continued through the 1990s on Fast Forward, Full Frontal and Big Girl’s Blouse – with many of those sketches still found on YouTube for retro laughs.

These days you’ll find her writing children’s books [Timmy The Ticked Off Pony collection], on Twitter all in the name of a good cause and crowdfunding for bushfire victims – teaming with “Egg Boy” Will Connolly to launch Regeneration: Creative Arts for Mental Health and Wellbeing – and prefers to keep her charity profile work under the radar rather than on a stage.

“I have always been a doer,” says Szubanski. “When I was in grade five, I started a school newspaper and wrote my own plays.  I have always been a self-starter. I don’t wait for someone to offer me a job; I go out and start something myself. I work with friends to create something. But that’s one side of me.

“The other thing that is important to me is trying to do my bit for the community in any way I can. It’s a strong impulse I have and something I care for deeply. I really like people, but many celebrities have a social conscience – just look at the Carrie Bickmores of the world; there are many who do great stuff.”

When COVID-19 hit, Szubanski found herself unable to go back to New Zealand to continue filming with director Jackie van Beek (from The Breaker Upperers). The scenes she had filmed prior to border closures couldn’t be used, but while she couldn’t travel, Szubanski took care of herself in other ways.

“I spent more time looking after myself a bit better by doing more meditation,” she says. “It made me reflect and tend to my old trauma wounds a bit better. Slowing down will do that. I was also deep in a writing phase with children’s books, so it worked out for me in that way.”

Szubanski, who turned 60 earlier this month, says she’s often stopped in the street by her fans – with many of them keen to talk about Kath & Kim, which she stopped filming in 2007. The character of Sharon re-emerged last year in state government TV commercials urging Victorians to mask-up during lockdown and reminding us of her hilarious take on sporting fanaticism.

“That show just won’t die. You couldn’t kill it if you tried,” Szubanski says.

“A whole new generation is discovering it again. Parents put their kids on it, and the cycle goes on. I had a lady come up to me recently who went through years of chemotherapy and whose boyfriend gave her Kath & Kim DVDs to make her laugh; so I guess it really is true that laughter is the best medicine.”

• The Weakest Link premieres in May on Nine.