Pitched as Newton’s first “clean” interview the segment drew 1.21 million viewers to Channel Nine, suggesting that viewers are just as interested in watching Matthew Newton interviews as Matthew Newton is at doing them. Despite the fact that the material promoting the interview heavily pitched it as “exclusive”, Newton gave a number of responses that sounded like closely paraphrased versions of the answers he gave Tracy Grimshaw in his highly publicised A Current Affair interview in November 2011.
At that time we wrote an article about the interview, focusing on Matthew Newton’s constant referral to his mental illness (“I lost my mind” was a favourite phrase he used) whenever his history of violence – particularly against former partners Brooke Satchwell and one-time fiancee Rachael Taylor – was broached. In that interview Newton told Tracy Grimshaw that these ‘incidents’ occurred during, quote, “frenzied manic episodes” or when “I was unwell” and “I wasn’t diagnosed as having an illness at that point.”
Interestingly, last night Newton said he was “at fault” for the assaults on Satchwell and Taylor (who sustained a shocking list of injuries including concussion and a sprained jaw) agreeing that “it’s never okay to hit someone”, but he also revealed that he is yet to receive an official diagnosis of a mental illness, despite avoiding criminal convictions on the grounds of mental health in the past.
Even in the absence of any major breakthroughs or revelations, the interview provoked some fairly incendiary social media commentary – particularly in regards to Newton’s comments about mental illness, including a tweet from Australian screenwriter and Howzat! actor Lachy Hulme who tweeted “Matthew Newton is a nasty little liar with questionable mental health issues” which received over 300 retweets – most notably from fellow actor Josh Lawson who was in a long-term relationship with Rachael Taylor.
I hope Channel Nine will dedicate no more screen time to Matthew Newton until he actually achieves something positive – and we’ll do the same.
