The infomercial queen looks back on an eventful life in TV, filled with Coronation Street, The Blue Monkey and a lot of reality television.
Suzanne Paul is a New Zealand television icon. Born and raised in England, Paul worked around the world for 20 years before she arrived in Aotearoa and discovered a new beauty product called Natural Glow. When she started promoting the product on TV in 1992, Paul’s two-minute long infomercials changed the advertising landscape. Suddenly, Suzanne Paul was everywhere, the face of thousands of luminous spheres, super-suction vacuums and a glamorous gold clip that transformed both your scarf and your life.
Paul then became a television presenter during the 1990s and 2000s, fronting primetime shows like Garage Sale, Second Honeymoon and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. She appeared in a variety of reality shows like Dancing with the Stars NZ (which she won in 2007) and City Celebrity, Country Nobody, and made cameos in shows from Outrageous Fortune to RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under. She even rapped with Scribe and, in what must be the ultimate career highlight, The Spinoff once tried to get her to Te Papa.
But wait, there’s more. On Monday, Paul returns to our screens as one of the castaways in the new season of Celebrity Treasure Island. It’s Paul’s second time on the reality series, having first appeared in 2003 in a celebrity cohort that included Nicky Watson, Louise Wallace, Jason Gunn and Marc Ellis. “When I came off, I was like ‘I’m never doing that again’,” Paul remembers, but admits that 20 years later, things are different. “I’ve never had a boring life, but it gets more difficult as you get older. Where are those opportunities? What am I going to do that’s different and exciting?”
When the offer came to return to CTI, 66-year-old Paul didn’t hesitate. As a fierce reality TV fan, she’d kept a keen eye on the show over the years, and was quietly confident that she could survive the modern iteration game. “I kept thinking to myself, I would have been alright at that challenge, I’d have had a go at that.” A mere 24 hours before she entered CTI once more, we sat down on a Coromandel beach with Paul and set her her first demanding challenge: to answer a series of My Life in TV questions. Tīmata!
My earliest TV memory is… Coronation Street. We all watched Coronation Street, and I still watch it now. That’s the life I lived, that was how our houses were, except actually Coronation Street was a bit posher, because we didn’t have any bathroom facilities. We didn’t have a bath or a shower, we only had a cold tap in the kitchen. My favourite character was Elsie Tanner. She was glamorous, she was feisty, she always had a handsome husband. You’d want to be Elsie Tanner, I think. That’s my role model.
My earliest TV crush was… David Cassidy. He was my hero. I had pictures of him stuck on the walls everywhere and I was lucky enough to meet him. He came over here and did a show called Where Are They Now? which was hosted by – god rest his soul – Paul Holmes. We all got to meet him and I showed him my old school hymn book, which had David Cassidy pictures posted all over it. He was like “how old are you? Have you had this picture book for 60 years?” I told him I take it everywhere with me. I’ve still got it.
The TV moment that haunts me is… A song that I recorded called ‘The Blue Monkey’. Wherever I go, people say, “do you want to do The Blue Monkey?” No, I do not want to do The Blue Monkey. I want to forget all about The Blue Monkey. I wish I never thought of it in the first place.
My enduring memory of my first season of CTI is… It was so hard. Reality shows were really in their infancy back in the 90s, and they didn’t worry too much about the celebrities. It was all about making you suffer as much as possible, as long as it was great TV. We were literally dropped at the island, men versus women, and told to build a camp. I said, “where’s the toilet?” They gave me a shovel, and it literally was just go out somewhere into the bush and dig the toilet. We didn’t have a proper camp. We had some leaves over us, some branches, we were sleeping on a bit of foam on the sand. There wasn’t much food at all.
My favourite TV moment from my own career is… Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. It’s the one show people stop and talk to me about the most. People say, “when are you bringing Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner back?”, or someone will come up to me and say, “you came to our house, I was only five and it was awesome”. I think we need a show like that. You know, there’s so much doom and gloom. Could people not watch something that gives them a bit of hope? There is still kindness in the world, and good things can happen to people that are not expecting it and it can change their lives. People have got to have hope, or they’ve got nothing.
The TV show I wish I’d been involved with is… The Traitors NZ. I’d go on it in a heartbeat. Oh my gosh, I would love it. I don’t know if I’d be any good at it, because I’ve never had to lie. All my adverts and things that I’ve sold, I have all the products. I’ve got the bed, I’ve got the chair, I’ve got everything. If I like it, I’ll sell it. I’m not going on TV and lying and saying “you’re going to love it” when it’s rubbish. People trust me, so how would that work if I was on a program like The Traitors? You’ve really got to lie and the best liar wins, and is that something to be proud of? I just love the drama of it. It’s so addictive.
The advice I’d give the new CTI castaways is… Just do your best and have fun. People can get a bit too caught up and they get stressed out about it, and they feel ill and sick and “ugh”. I’m just, it is what it is. My life’s been very up and down, but you just make the best of what you have at the time. That’s my motto. I say to them, “let’s do our best, have fun, and sparkle and shine”. To me, the sparkle and shine sums everything up. It is to be the best version of yourself, give it everything you’ve got. It doesn’t work out, you know you did your best. I never go into anything where I’m not fully passionate about it.
The last thing I watched on television was… Married at First Sight Australia. I’m a reality show junkie. Love it. Love The Block, love MAFS, love The Traitors, Celebrity Treasure Island. Again, it’s all about the drama, isn’t it? We were all talking about it on the bus coming out here: “Did you see MAFS? What about him? What about her?” We’re all taking it so seriously.
Celebrity Treasure Island premieres on Monday September 9 at 7.30pm on TVNZ2 and streams on TVNZ+.