Szubanksi also took the opportunity to remind Australians that she was the child of a refugee as the crisis worsens in Syria and the government agrees to accept 12,000 refugees. I had lived an openly lesbian life at uni and at the refuge, but exposure to the straight world revived and magnified my old anxiety.” I can’t explain why I felt so embarrassed, plenty of my friends knew. “I don’t know if the other cast members knew I was gay, they never said and I could not bring myself to tell them. Gina Riley, Jane Turner, Magda Szubanski in a scene from Big Girls Blouse in 1998. but I was a Polish, Scottish, Irish, short, fat, lesbian. “The cast were the most clean cut bunch I had ever met. She said she felt like an alien from the moment she stepped onto the The D-Generation set back in 1986. It’s hard to argue that, but there are some sacrifices that you make that you aren't even aware that you’re making sometimes or ways that you curtail yourself or things that you lose along the way.” “I don’t know whether I regret that in some ways, whether I should have come out earlier, whether my mainstream success was at the cost of my personal life. “But certainly when I was coming up through the ranks, if I had been openly lesbian, it would have been an absolute career wrecker. “I always felt that the decision primarily for me was between the mainstream and my sexuality, and I found that really difficult,” she said. And for almost 30 years, she chose the latter. The Open Slather star said she was forced to make a decision between being open about her sexuality and being involved in mainstream media. Gina Riley with Jane Turner and Magda Szubanski in Kath and Kim in 2002. When she first joined The D-Generation in 1986, the 54-year-old said she initially felt threatened by Turner and envied her talent. “When we finally overcame our pride and prejudice a year later when I moved in with a mutual friend, Gina and I completely fell in love over the phone when she would ring to speak to him and get stuck talking to me.”īut it wasn’t just Riley that Szubanksi wasn’t all that fond of. “The dislike was mutual, I thought she was a crass show off and she thought I was a stuck up snob. “I hated her on sight,” Szubanksi said at the ASTRA Women in Television breakfast this morning. The animosity between Riley and Szubanski was particularly apparent. The trio - who all starred in Fast Forward, Big Girls Blouse and Kath and Kim, three of the most successful Australian comedies of all time - were far from instant friends. DESPITE being friends and carving out a career together for almost 30 years, Magda Szubanksi says she couldn’t stand her Kath and Kim co-stars Jane Turner and Gina Riley when they first met.

Marg downey