News of Karl Stefanovic‘s marriage breakdown and his new relationship with model Jasmine Yarbrough dominated the nation’s headlines in the latter part of last year, and nobody is more surprised about this than Stefanovic himself.
In his first substantial sit-down interview since his divorce, the Today host spoke to News Corp‘s Stellar magazine, and admitted that he’s perplexed by all the attention his love life receives, saying he views himself as just a “boring guy”.
When he separated from Cassandra Thorburn, his wife of 21 years, Stefanovic became a target for the nation’s paparazzi and gossip rags, and reflecting on this, he said:
“I don’t know where it comes from, I don’t know what drives it; I guess as a public figure you’ve got to roll with it and I’m not as hard done by as many other people out there. From my perspective, I’m not interesting. I’m a boring guy. I’ve gone through some personal stuff that’s been difficult on everyone in my family. That has been the hardest aspect: the increased public interest, or coverage, makes it more intense to navigate through. But it isn’t a world event, it’s not a national event, it’s not a community event. I don’t know where to place it. It confuses the hell out of me.”
Showing a different side from his normal larrikin persona, he admitted that all the attention around the time of his divorce took a toll, leaving him scared to leave the house and face up to the chaos:
“When it first happened, it was so intense I was frightened to go outside. I don’t mean that in an unmanly way, but I can’t stand that kind of attention. People might find that weird because I’m on television, but it’s very different. TV’s very controlled. When your personal life is completely overrun by things out of your control and your life is under a microscope, it’s like, “God, I can’t even walk without thinking I’m going to trip over” … I’ve had my own father talk to a magazine. I’ve had friends and family say things to magazines and stuff and it’s like, “how many more betrayals do you want?’”
He said that he is “taking things slowly” with Yarbrough, partly out of respect for his family and partly for the sake of their own privacy, but says that the past few months have made him a “better man”:
“I think I have stripped a lot of layers back. I don’t know whether I’m stronger, but I’m getting better. There were a lot of things that I put up, a lot of walls that I put up, a lot of emotions that I thought I should be and I’ve tried to be honest with myself about how I’ve failed in certain areas and how I can be better in other areas. To be able to be honest with myself has been the hardest thing and I have had some very dark mornings and nights where I’ve felt ashamed and I felt that I’d failed … But I’m much more open now and I’m much more honest in the way that I approach everything and that’s harder. So I don’t know whether I’m stronger, but I’m certainly more open and I’ve got to try. I don’t want to live in some world where I’m pretending to be something I’m not. I’m trying my best to be as open and honest as I can be. I’m not succeeding 100 per cent, but I’m on the way there.”
The full interview appears in the Stellar Magazine liftout in today’s Sunday Mail, Sunday Herald Sun and Sunday Telegraph, and online.
Source: Stellar.
Photo: Scott Barbour / Getty / Steven Chee / Stellar.
