Sylvia Jeffries on the Power of Resilience

It’s a chilly afternoon when I catch up with Sylvia over Zoom, and she’s losing her voice. We’re both huddled in our own nest of blankets and feeling a tad sniffly, keeping the tissues close at hand. But what should be awkward feels perfectly normal. Making people feel comfortable is a gift of Sylvia’s – one that was on full display at our cover shoot just the week before.

Then, she got us nattering about everything from her upcoming interview with Fleabag actress Phoebe Waller-Bridge, to the horrors of ‘runner’s nipple’ – something the TV presenter’s been keenly aware of and trying to avoid while training for her first-ever Sydney Marathon.

She speculates that the morning’s training run might be part of what’s got her feeling under the weather. “The air was freezing – I could just feel it rasping into my lungs,” she says. “Maybe I was on the edge of something and this run was the straw that broke the camel’s back? So, I’m just going to spend the next couple of days at home, taking it easy.”

Marathon mornings

‘Taking it easy’ is generally easier said than done in Sylvia’s busy world: managing a demanding work schedule (she co-hosts Today Extra each morning on the Nine Network) with the needs of her young sons, Oscar, three, and Henry, two, keep her and her husband, fellow TV journalist Peter Stefanovic, on their toes.

How do they keep the wheels from falling off? “Sleep!” says Sylvia, 38. “We’re sleep obsessed in this house. Pete’s like clockwork, in bed by 7.30pm, up again at 3.45am. I’m usually in bed by 8.45pm. I think working super-early hours combined with two babies in quick succession makes you very heavily sleep deprived. There’s no greater joy than having a solid eight hours in bed – that’s what I strive for every day.”

The couple also prioritise exercise. “I notice the difference in my mood and attitude very quickly if I miss a few days,” Sylvia shares. “It doesn’t have to be intense, either – just 20 minutes on a bike or maybe 30 minutes stretching.”

So, why commit to the intensity of a 42-kilometre marathon? “That’s a question I’m still asking myself,” she says, laughing. “I’ve done a half-marathon before – an achievable, sensible kind of goal, to my mind. But, at the start of the year, my friend Ben Lucas [owner of Flow Athletic in Sydney] suggested I sign up and give it a go. He’s trained hundreds of people to run marathons from scratch and knew that I’d been wanting to get back into running since having my babies.

"I’ve surprised myself with every milestone I’ve ticked off: I’ve learnt that, if you have a goal, do the work and stick to it, you can do things that you didn’t think you could do. It gives you a really cool sense of achievement.”

Sylvia has extra impetus to finish the marathon: “I’m doing the run for Youngcare, a charity that I work with. They’re all about building specialist disability accommodation to give young people with high-care disabilities choice, freedom and independence, so I’ll be raising money for them.”

Core values

Besides Youngcare, Sylvia also supports several women’s health initiatives, such as the ‘Heart for Her’ campaign for The Royal Hospital for Women in Sydney. She credits her strong sense of social responsibility to her parents. “Mum worked as a social worker for her entire professional life, often in the area of disability and rehabilitation,” Sylvia explains. “She has an extremely strong sense of right and wrong, and of supporting people less fortunate than you. I see getting involved with Youngcare as a way of honouring her work.”

Sylvia describes both her parents as “very community-minded”, which has had an indelible effect on her life. “My dad worked in politics for years and is a strong representative for other people in his community,” she says. “He’s also a Vietnam veteran who was conscripted. They’ve both built some really strong foundations in terms of principles and fighting for people who need a voice. So, yes, I probably do sometimes get a little bit emotionally invested in things.”

Women’s health causes are something Sylvia actively starts conversations about. “My work has also made me more aware that a lot of female issues don’t get as much attention as others. I’m passionate about facilitating these things and driving some change as a result. Whether it’s talking about tampons freely in the workplace, the debilitating pains of endometriosis... Or subjects like infertility, which is something I experienced while trying to fall pregnant with my first child and didn’t know who to speak to about it.”

That hot tub incident

Working in media is a natural fit for Sylvia – and something she chased from a young age. “I wanted to be a sports journalist – I was and still am sports obsessed,” she says. “I guess I saw myself travelling the world and reporting on netball tournaments and the Ashes and the Olympics... But there weren’t many women doing sports journalism at the time, especially not in television. [TV presenter and former competitive swimmer] Johanna Griggs was probably it. But she had the sporting chops to get there, whereas I did not.”

Sylvia’s break came at 19, when she got a job rolling the autocue on set at the Nine Network in Brisbane. “I spent one hour in the newsroom and I caught the bug immediately,” she remembers. “The rest is history.”

A history that apparently includes being ‘propositioned’ by Richard Branson to read the Kama Sutra with him in his hot tub. Did this really happen? Sylvia cracks up laughing.

“He did, but I declined. I’ve actually met him twice now. Our team went across to his private island in Queensland and he was giving a tour. We were walking through the bedroom and there was a copy of the Kama Sutra by the bed, next to the empty bathtub...” Which is when Richard turned on the charm for the camera. “I said no and we moved on and had a fabulous time.”

Career highlight

While Richard Branson’s cheek left her chuckling, Sylvia lists another encounter as one that left her awestruck: interviewing former Prime Minister Bob Hawke.

“It was one of his last interviews before he passed away,” she recalls. “I majored in political science at university and come from a pretty political family, so, to me, he’s probably the most fascinating, complex, charismatic Australian prime minister we’ve ever had. He defined an era – not just in politics but also in Australian culture. To have an hour to sit down with Bob Hawke, and to spend it on his balcony while he’s doing a Sudoku and puffing on a cigar... Surreal!”

Sylvia says she’d been warned before the interview that “Bob loves tall blondes, so will probably say something – brace yourself!” Which did nothing to soothe her nerves on the day.

“I could hear him coming down the stairs... He walks in, comes face to face with me, sort of cranes his head up (he was quite a bit shorter than me) and says, ‘You should play for the Sydney Swans!’ I don’t think that’s quite the ‘compliment’ I was expecting,” she says, laughing, “but definitely one of my highlights.”

Feeling the pressure

Sylvia’s had her fair share of public scrutiny. “It can be quite confronting, but it definitely doesn’t bother me as much as it used to,” she says. Perhaps the toughest was when tabloids would comment on her physical appearance – at a time when she was actually trying and struggling to fall pregnant.

“They’d take a pic of me every time I breathed out and run it with an ‘is she?!’ headline. It was hard to cope with – and deeply insensitive. But, now, I laugh at most of it. If I receive criticism because I haven’t done a good enough job, then okay – I’m the first one to criticise myself. But if it’s something about what I’m wearing, or how I look or what I’m doing, I think, 'whatever!' It actually feels a bit like satire to me.”

It helps to have the support of a partner who understands the unique pressures of a media career and balances you when things get tough. “I’m an unhinged tornado and Pete’s a calm farm,” Sylvia says. “He slows me down and helps me to take deep breaths before I explode. That’s how we work.

I have ‘monkey brain’: flipping from one topic to another without a breath in between. And the ability to catastrophise! So, if I haven’t had an emotional meltdown by the end of the day, that’s a good day.”

Sylvia doesn’t think there’s such a thing as a perfectly synchronised life, anyway. “This is the point I’m at: when I look at the big picture of what’s consuming my life on any given day, there are times I just have to decide, something’s gotta give,” she says. “You sacrifice one thing for another and you keep on keeping on. Generally, I’m just trying to do my best at everything, everywhere, all at once.”

It may also help that Sylvia’s a born-and-bred Queenslander, which comes with a certain laidback attitude. “I definitely have a Queensland identity and I know Pete does, too. A big part of that is being happy to just go along with things. That’s also what we do in our job, you know? When you’re on the road as a journalist, working in challenging environments and experiencing dramatic scenes, you’ve got to have the ability to adapt and roll with it.”

Heart of the matter

Sylvia admits that her job can be difficult and that much of the news reported in the media can be sad and tragic. “But, at the heart of every story, there’s strength and resilience and kindness,” she says.

“The humanity you see in ordinary people every day is what carries us all through. And it’s there in every story, if you’re willing to look for it and make sure it’s highlighted. It’s life affirming and shows that we all have the ability to be resilient and strong. And if you happen not to be on [duty on] any particular day, there’s someone who’s willing to and can be that for you. That’s what we see in our job every day.”

Sylvia says she let go of the idea of a ‘bucket list’ a long time ago. “I never knew that ‘here’ was where I would be at this point. But here I am. And I’m so grateful for it. I’ll just tap into that Queensland identity for a while and see what happens next. There’s a big, wide world of opportunity out there and I’m excited to see where it takes me.”