A look at The Real Housewives of Melbourne featuring Andrea Moss, Jackie Gillies, Gina Liano, Janet Roach, Chyka Keebaugh and Lydia Schiavello. Begins February 2014 on Arena on Foxtel.
The Real Housewives of Melbourne ... (From left) Lydia Schiavello, Andrea Moss, Chyka Keebaugh, Gina Liano, Janet Roach and Jackie Gillies. Source: News Limited
Real Housewives of Melbourne cast member Andrea Moss has a smart, razor-sharp tongue.
Moss runs a skincare centre and is married to one of Australia’s most successful plastic surgeons, Chris Moss, so you’d expect her to have a silky-smooth complexion.
But you can guarantee that if your gaze shifts from her face to her bosom, she’ll answer the question before you get a chance to ask it.
“I just tell them the smile is fake, but the boobs are real,” she says.
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The good news for those eagerly awaiting Sunday’s premiere of the first Australian edition of Real Housewives is all six of the female stars know how to hurl a verbal grenade.
Real Housewives of Melbourne ... Lydia Schiavello. Picture: Foxtel Source: Supplied
“All buzzing around like blowflies” ... Gina Liano on Real Housewives of Melbourne. Picture: Foxtel Source: Supplied
Take Gina Liano, who at first glance appears all glitz and feathers, but is a hardworking mum and barrister. She recently had this to say about her experiences on the show: “They’re (other housewives) all buzzing around like blowflies and I’m the one who sits there blowing them off.”
ANDREA MOSS, 45, TOORAK
A busy mum and owner of the exclusive Liberty Belle Skin Centre in up-market Toorak. Married to Dr. Chris Moss, one of Australia’s most successful plastic surgeons, Andrea also manages his business while dealing with major expansion plans required to serve their ever growing Melbourne, national and international clientele. Weekends are spent with her husband and their three children at their Mornington Peninsula holiday home. Andrea has in the past worked as a reporter for Channel 7 news in Sydney and ABC in New York.
CHYKA KEEBAUGH, 45, MALVERN
Renowned for quiet confidence and a positive outlook on life. She married her best friend Bruce and together they built one of Australia’s largest privately owned catering and event companies, The Big Group. Twenty-two years later they employ over 150 people full time and have over 1,250 casual employees on their books. Clients range from Middle Eastern sheiks to European aristocracy. Chyka and Bruce have two teenage children.
GINA LIANO, 47, SOUTH YARRA
Gina is a barrister and a single mum of two boys. Divorced, and a cancer survivor, she is also part of fashion royalty; Bettina and Teresa (TL Wood) are her sisters. Gina’s the glue in her family, she’s everyone’s first point of call in a crisis. She has been in the legal game for 14 years.
JANET ROACH, 55, RED HILL
Roach is a property developer and a newly single bombshell. After a drama involving secret online dating, she promptly dumped her husband. This self-made woman is worth more than her ex and is proud to say she can buy anything she desires, without looking at the price tag. Janet is on a journey to discover herself and what makes her happy. She’s looking for a new man and having a ball doing it. Janet is a mother of two boys. She is also close to the three stepchildren from her second marriage.
LYDIA SCHIAVELLO, 45, MALVERN
Schiavello is honest, self-assured and calls it as she sees it. A devoted mother of two boys, one girl and three stepchildren, she boasts a beautiful home in Malvern and an exclusive holiday home in Thredbo — complete with her own private plane. Lydia recently married the renowned architect and property investor Andrew Norbury in Florence. Lydia is also studying interior design.
Tell that to psychic Jackie Gillies, who is married to Silverchair drummer Ben Gillies and has a fire cracker personality. Confident and opinionated, she has a laugh that could split a pumpkin.
But she’s also at the centre of the most heated moment in The Real Housewives of Melbourne’s first episode.
Gillies, 33, is at a dinner party with the cast when her psychic abilities prompt her to suggest that the partner of one of the other women is cheating on her.
When Gillies explains that the message from the other side has come via the woman’s grandmother, the woman erupts.
“That’s not my grandmother, that’s a demon (speaking through Gillies),” the woman says in a later confrontation.
In turn, the tanned, long-legged Gillies responds, “Don’t say I’m speaking through demonic spirits. I think you’re a demon, the way you’re acting.”
In an interview in a boutique hotel in South Yarra, Gillies offers insight into why emotions were so raw at the dinner party.
“What angered me was she used that (demon reference) in a manipulating way,”
Gillies says.“It was like she tried to defame me, in a sense. I gave her a psychic vibe, she knew it was true. She thought, ‘I have to backtrack, how am I going to backtrack? I’m going to say that what you said is demonic.’
“In her heart she knew it wasn’t a demon I was speaking through. I have complete trust and faith in everything the other side tell me.”
Employs over 150 full and 1,250 casual workers ... Chyka Keebaugh, Real Housewives of Melbourne. Picture: Foxtel Source: Supplied
Uses her psychic abilities ... Jackie Gillies, Real Housewives of Melbourne. Picture: Foxtel Source: Supplied
The idea of being part of a show like Real Housewives of Melbourne occurred to Gillies well before she’d been approached by producers.
She was acutely aware that some see the Housewives franchise as a cesspit of cat fights and hissy fits and that few escape it with reputation intact, but that wasn’t enough to turn her off being part of the show.
“Three weeks before I got the call from one of the producers, I was watching TV and said to Ben, ‘I am going to be doing a show like this’. I believe that what you think is what you create. When I got the call, Ben said, ‘Oh my God, you did say this three weeks ago’.
“A reality show, you will have your bitching and drama and everything else, but there will be something inspiring that I’m able to do on a bigger scale to help somebody and that’s why I believe I’ve attracted this show.
“What you see with me is what you get. I get along with all of the girls really well. Gina and I, she is not my best friend, but I have come to learn with Gina to take her with a grain of salt, that’s all. We talk and have a laugh. She annoys me, does my head in sometimes, but I probably do the same to her.”
At school, Gillies wasn’t sitting at the back of the class thinking about ghosts. Born in Croatia and raised in Newcastle, her teenage ambitions revolved around acting and singing.
As a child, she believed the psychic messages she was receiving were simply part of her imagination. Back then it was her parents who were having dreams containing premonitions — “things that a day or so later would come true,” she says.
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Aged 10, Gillies had an experience that would prompt some to not just scream in fear, but vow to sleep with the light on.
She and her sister were at a sleepover when it occurred to them the bedroom they were in was haunted. Sharing a bed, they were woken by the sound of children singing.
“I can feel the spirits starting to come through even talking about it,” Gillies says. “We woke up, we sat up and there were these kids (spirits) singing, ‘Ring a ring of rosy’. The dogs outside are barking and I’m thinking, what the hell. Me and my sister, she saw it too, start crying. It wasn’t like I felt they were gong to attack me, it was almost like, ‘oh my God, you can see me’. It was like, ‘we need help, we are here, but we don’t want to be here.’
“These kids I could see, it was almost like they wanted to be at peace, but their energy was stuck in that place We put the covers over our heads, we could still hear them singing.”
Newly single property developer ... Janet Roach is on Real Housewives of Melbourne. Picture: Foxtel Source: Supplied
Eleven years later, a disillusioned Gillies was at home crying, “swearing at God”, struggling to figure out where she fitted in and what her future held. She then saw an angel, but rather than feeling fearful, Gillies likened the experience to “a special hug from your mother that makes you feel safe”.
The next day she began hearing messages about people that she realised were designed to pass on as guidance.
Is there a film Gillies has seen that represents most accuratelywhat the spirit world is to her?
“Peaceful Warrior,” she says. “It’s about a person who’s very egotistical, doing drugs and alcohol, shagging heaps of chicks. It’s like he’s guided to this shop to help this man out. He thinks this is a human being, but it’s an angel, and teaches him how to see himself in a loving way, see how what you do affects others, how you should be living your authentic, true life.
“Before I started doing my readings, I said to the other side — my angels and spirit guides — that if I’m to do this, and I do want to do this to inspire people, you need to know I only want
to be around people who are positive.“I’m not here to prove anything to anybody, and I never want to be the bearer of bad news. I never want to see anybody’s death, bad accidents. I will block that. They won’t give that to me. Archangel Michael is my main angel, and there’s Archangel Raphael and Gabriel. Then I have
my two spirit guides and my grandmother sitting at the back.”Real Housewives of Melbourne, Arena (Foxtel), Sunday, 8.30pm
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