Liz Ellis reveals she was job-hunting on Seek before going on I'm A Celebrity

Liz Ellis has revealed she was ready to walk away from her three-decade-long career in the public eye before she received a call from Channel 10 to appear on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! last year.

The netball legend and sports commentator, 50, tells Yahoo Lifestyle she had taken 2022 off work to travel around Australia with her family and had plans to start a “normal job” in regional New South Wales the following year.

“I’d finished my contract with Channel Nine at the end of 2021, the netball rights had left Nine and gone to Fox, and I thought, this is the perfect time to have a break and think about what I want to do next,” she recalls.

“So I got back from that holiday and I’d turned 50, my hair was grey and I was unemployed, and I thought, well that's the end of my television career. So I signed up to Seek and looked for jobs in my area. I’m married to a farmer so we were like, okay, we'll just focus a bit on that.”

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It was then that Channel 10 contacted Liz to appear as a contestant on the next season of I’m A Celebrity - which she says she immediately turned down.

“My daughter was like, ‘You have to! Why not?’,” Liz details. “I said, ‘Well I worry about what people will think about me’, and then she was like, ‘Well you're always telling me not to worry about what other people think’. You teach your kids those lessons and they throw them back at you and the next minute, you're in the jungle.

“So I realised then that 2023 was the year to take risks and do things that I would never normally do to get out of my comfort zone.”

Gladiators 2024

After spending a month in the South African jungle and taking out the title of ‘Queen of the Jungle’, Liz was then approached to host Channel 10’s upcoming reboot of Gladiators.

The sports entertainment series, which first aired in Australia in 1995 and had a brief return in 2008, is described as a 'David vs Goliath battle' where a group of permanent 'Gladiators' compete against 'Contenders' in a series of iconic events.

“It immediately appealed to me because I love sport and my whole broadcasting background is in sport, but I really love being funny and silly and having fun,” she says.

“And to work with Beau [Ryan] was really appealing as well because he's fun but he's really good at his job, and he was the perfect person to hold my hand through my debut hosting an entertainment program. So immediately I was like, ‘Yeah this is awesome, let’s do it!’.”

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Liz shares that the new season includes several nods to the original series, including the appearance of former Gladiator Mark McGaw as a referee, as well as a few modern twists.

“There are things that are silly and camp and fun and there's a lot of tongue-in-cheek things, but at the heart of it, it's still a contest,” she remarks. “These contenders take on these amazingly fit and strong Gladiators, and there's something really meaningful in it for them because the winning male and the female become Gladiators in the next series.

“So there were a few things we really wanted to lean into but at the heart of it is that athletic contest. Then it gets wrapped in this epic arena and the fun in the silliness, and hopefully, Beau and I just being goofs on the sideline helps to do that.”

Gladiators premieres Monday, 15 January at 7:30pm on 10 and 10 Play.

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