As TVNZ’s Breakfast celebrates a quarter century on our screens, Tara Ward talks to presenters Indira Stewart, Jenny-May Clarkson and Matty McLean about what the show means to them.

Matty McLean’s first week at Breakfast was like no other. It was 2007, McLean was 21 and he was shoved into a live cross with hosts Paul Henry and Pippa Wetzell, having never done a live cross before in his life. On day one, he serenaded the nation with an Exponents song. On day two, he changed his name. Henry and Wetzell decided he looked more like a Matty than a Matt, and that was that. “That’s the thing about Breakfast,” McLean explains. “There’s never an ease-in period. You’re literally just chucked in the deep end, and it’s sink or swim.”

Fifteen years later, Matty McLean has swum his way to presenting Breakfast – alongside Indira Stewart and Jenny-May Clarkson – as the show celebrates 25 years on television. The show debuted on what was then known as TV One in 1997 with hosts Susan Wood and Mike Hosking heralding a new dawn in New Zealand television: news at both 6am and 6pm. Since then, the early-morning current affairs show has featured more than 20 presenters and nearly as many fancy sets, with hosts including Alison Mau, Kate Hawkesby, Jack Tame, Hilary Barry and John Campbell.

Breakfast joins a small but exclusive group of long-running shows that have become part of our TV landscape, but it’s only recently that the show’s line-up has reflected the diversity of New Zealand society. “You only have to look at who presents it now: a proudly Pasifika woman, a gay man and a proud Māori woman,” Clarkson says of how Breakfast has changed over the years. She’s mindful of the platform she has to normalise te reo Māori on mainstream television. “Something Breakfast has really worked hard on, especially in recent years, is reflecting more of New Zealand than ever before,” McLean adds.

The conversations may have evolved over time, but Breakfast remains primarily focused on delivering the news. Breakfast television is unique, in that it covers everything from the war in Ukraine to the opening of a community art gallery to in-studio interviews with celebrity guests, all in the same show. It’s a mix of high and low, light and heavy, and the changes come thick and fast. “Every moment, every interview is different, and it takes you into a different space,” Clarkson says, adding that it’s these constant shifts in tone and content that give the Breakfast team the energy they need to navigate three hours of live television, five days a week.

“You can’t bullshit your way through it,” Clarkson says of live television. “You have to be authentically you. Otherwise, people see through that.” All three hosts agree that it’s a privilege to be part of their viewers’ daily routines. McLean reckons Breakfast gets invited into people’s homes in ways that other shows never will: “I know someone who says they watch us in the bathroom, but she has to turn the phone around because she feels like we’re watching her. It’s that intimate relationship.”

Clarkson describes Breakfast as the best job with the worst hours. The team are proud of the connection the show has with their audience, particularly during the Covid-19 lockdowns. “You know, people don’t have to tell us their stories,” Clarkson says, “but I’m a big believer that when you tell your story, you give others permission to tell theirs. So when people do, I’m grateful for that, because there will be somebody sitting at home going, ‘Wow, that’s me. We’re not alone’.”

“I never take it for granted, and I genuinely love the people I work with, because you don’t want to be getting up at stupid o’clock to work with dickheads.”

It’s been a tough year for Breakfast, but 25 years is an achievement worth celebrating. Stewart says it’s surreal to work on a show she grew up watching every morning, and while there’s no word on whether McLean will bust out his inflatable T rex suit again, viewers can expect to look back at the show’s most memorable moments. Maybe we’ll even get another McLean rendition of The Exponents’ ‘Victoria’. “For me, our job is to inform people, but it’s to also put a smile on their faces and leave them with a sense of hope and optimism, because the world can feel a little bit overwhelming sometimes,” McLean says.

It’s impossible to know what early morning television will look like in another 25 years, but the team thinks there will still be a place for shows like Breakfast. “The amount of people that sit down and make us a part of their morning routine is incredible, so clearly we’re still offering something that they want,” McLean says. “That’s a beautiful thing, and I don’t see that going away anywhere anytime soon.”

Breakfast’s 25th anniversary episode screens from 6am on TVNZ1.