Vanessa ‘OMGNess’ Goodson, winner of The Apprentice Aotearoa, tells Alex Casey about her Covid-19 experience, and why she is using her large Instagram platform to share the realities of life in quarantine. 

Her one regret is not bringing her balloon pump into quarantine with her. “I so could have done my balloons out here,” Vanessa Goodson, winner of The Apprentice Aotearoa and balloon-styling maestro, says, gesturing to the small hotel balcony with one perfectly French-manicured hand. “I could have ballooned the whole place so when people pull up with Covid and they are feeling scared, they see the balloons and say ‘oh, it’s fine, OMGNess is here’.”

She’s speaking over Zoom from a quarantine facility in Auckland, where her small family arrived a week ago after Covid-19 began to spread through their bubble. Although she may have forgotten the balloons, Goodson is sharing her experience of catching Covid-19 with her social media audience of thousands, in the hope it will make people feel less fearful of the quarantine process. “You never think it is going to happen to you, and then when it happens to you, you realise: ‘I’ve got a following here, what would happen if I told people about it?’”

So far, her Covid content includes an hour-long Instagram Live Q&A, and a fascinating supercut of her induction day, soundtracked, of course, by Beyoncé. “That day was really overwhelming,” Goodson recalls. “From having to pack up and leave my house in the van, to pulling up here and getting settled into our room, it was easily the most emotional I’ve been.” After a close contact tested positive, she knew it was only a matter of time until they got the call. The phone rang on Monday morning, and she was in quarantine by the end of the day. 

“They told me they had booked us a room, the van was coming at 4pm, bring a mask and see you soon.”

Known for a lavish, “bougie” personal brand so pervasive that she penned her own sassy catchphrase “it’s a lifestyle” on The Apprentice, Goodson packed eight monogrammed Guess bags to take into quarantine. She hadn’t tested positive for Covid-19 herself yet, but knew it was likely to happen and would probably extend her stay. “I packed up my whole life – my ring light, my crystals, my makeup, all my cosmetics, all my sponsored stuff that I was being an influencer for in case I had to do some work here, my laptop, five chargers, and all our food from home.” 

Despite bringing all their food, the family failed to pack their air fryer – a zeitgeisty appliance Goodson has come to rely on heavily. She immediately ordered another, which was immediately banned on arrival due to fire safety concerns. Ever the hustler, Goodson pitched her cuisine vision to the authorities. “I really had to plead my case to them, like ‘please, I’m grateful for the food but I just want a steak and I promise you I won’t make any smoke’.” Yesterday, they heard her call, allowing her to fix up a pork belly TikTok recipe in the air fryer.

As opulent as the meal might appear on Instagram, there’s one small problem – Goodson can barely taste anything. “I’m trying to eat lemons and oranges to kickstart my taste buds but it is still really bland,” she says.” It’s one of the symptoms of Covid-19 that remains, after four days where Goodson says she “felt like I was dying.” Things went downhill quickly after she noticed a dry, sore throat on her second night in quarantine. “It felt like I had smoked 20 packets of cigarettes, that same feeling after you’ve had a big night and you don’t even smoke cigarettes but you get those flashbacks? That’s what it feels like.”

Then came the headaches, what Goodson first assumed might have just been a mild hangover from the much-needed red wine she cracked open once they had settled into their room. “I had a few glasses with dinner, and then I started to feel really off. I was like – ‘Am I drunk here or what’s going on?’ – and was feeling really confused and irritable.” All of these things, she would soon find out, were Covid-19 symptoms. By the third day she was bedridden, sleeping all day and unable to walk to the door without getting breathless. 

Finally returning a positive test, Goodson recalls having a minor “freak-out”, having actively avoided the Covid-19 news cycle and the 1pm updates because they gave her too much anxiety. “I hadn’t been reading about it, I had been trying not to think about it, and then I just realised ‘oh my god, it’s right here – I’m a case’.” In her worn-down state, she could barely process the news. “You’re just weak, super weak. For those few days, I can’t even remember taking phone calls, I couldn’t even communicate properly because I wasn’t feeling well at all.” 

One of the people she did manage to message through the fog of Covid-19 was mortgage mogul Mike Pero, whom she has been working closely with since winning the latest season of The Apprentice Aotearoa. In fact, when the nationwide lockdown was first announced, the pair were doing a photoshoot for what Goodson describes as their “big secret plans” for the future. “He was one of the first people I told, because I needed to let him know I couldn’t work through the big to-do list that he’s given me,” she laughs.

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Fans of the show will remember the one big expense that Goodson had planned if she won the $50,000 prize: a van for transporting her balloon garlands to events. After their first planning meeting post-show, Goodson says that Pero returned to Christchurch and found a van for her within a day, even taking it for a test drive and negotiating a good price. Although not quite the BMW she dreamed of – it’s a Toyota – the van is one more thing she is looking forward to when she’s released from quarantine, Auckland eventually moves down alert levels, and she can get stuck back into her growing her business.

“Not gonna lie, I’ve lost a lot of money in the last few weeks. We were about to go into like the single busiest event season, with fashion week and all these big huge corporate jobs lined up that I’ve been working towards all year. I’ve watched all this money disappear.” 

Goodson is feeling a lot better now – she’s even started wearing false eyelashes again – but remains shocked by the impact the virus had. “If I felt like this and I am like a pretty healthy 31-year-old, then I couldn’t imagine how it would affect someone older whose health isn’t at 100%,” she says. “I was like out to it – it’s a very buzzy sickness.” Her balloon-less balcony overlooks the driveway of the quarantine facility, where she sees the ambulances come and go daily. “That’s what is really sad and scary, when you see that reminder of the other people and what they are going through here.” 

While she and her family recover, she will continue to post about her experience in the hopes of demystifying Covid-19. When she found she was positive, she turned to social media hashtags like #caughtcovid and #testedpositive for reassurance. “I wanted to know how real people really feel about all this,” she says. “And then I thought it would probably be quite empowering to share my story. I’m going into this as a parent, and I’m sure there are other parents out there who are freaking out. So hopefully I can use my voice to normalise it, because this is our normal right now.” 

It’s not just Covid-19 content creation she is focusing on at the moment. Ever the entrepreneur, Goodson’s time in quarantine has inspired another possible business venture. “I want to make fashion masks, I’ve actually already got a mood board of Fendi, Louis Vuitton and mask jewellery as well,” she says. “I’ve been looking at all the Covid trends while I’ve been in here.” She admits that a few people on social media have asked for t-shirts to be made of her one-liners, including “only bad bitches get Covid” and “it’s a MIQ lifestyle”. 

She laughs off the idea of catchphrase merch, for now, but as our interview comes to a close, she drops another gem: ‘Rona can’t stop me, no one can.” 

TVNZ’s Breakfast team has embraced viral dances in lockdown, and people are loving it. Stewart Sowman-Lund talks to Matty McLean about the birth of Breakfast’s Child. 

The Breakfast team established early on that Jenny was the Beyoncé of the group. “We just follow her lead,” Matty McLean says. “Now, Jenny-May and I are just battling it out for who is going to be Kelly and Michelle.” 

You’d be forgiven for thinking he might be referring to the hosting dynamics on TVNZ’s daily morning show, but the Destiny’s Child comparison has arisen from somewhere much more surprising. Since the start of lockdown, McLean and his colleagues Jenny-May Clarkson and Jenny Suo have been going viral on social media with their short, joy-infused dances, which have now been viewed close to 1.5 million times.

The dances might be less than 15 seconds long, but that doesn’t mean they are easy to learn. They’re all based on “dance challenges” – an internet phenomenon that helped push TikTok into the mainstream – where people film their own versions of short dance routines. And they’re full of complicated footwork.

“I always thought I had rhythm until I started to try and learn choreography,” McLean says, bemused. “I have so much respect for dancers now because it is insane. The first clip Jenny-May sent me was literally 15 seconds so I thought that would be easy. No, it took me hours.” 

It was Clarkson who first had the idea to start filming short dance videos, after she saw the hosts of The Today Show doing it in Australia. “She approached me and asked if I was keen to give it a go and I said yes. I’m just up for anything,” says McLean. “I say yes to things without considering whether they are a good idea – and case in point.”

The trio tried filming the dances before Breakfast went live at 6am, but quickly realised that wasn’t going to be sustainable. “We were way too stretched, timing-wise, and the poor hair and makeup team had to wait in the wings so they could touch up our makeup before we went live because we’d be sweating and out of breath,” says McLean. These days, they only get to practise together once or twice, with the final version filmed after the show wraps at 9am. 

McLean says he’s getting better now, or at least he thinks he is. With rehearsal times reduced, he has been practising in his wardrobe, prancing back and forth and documenting his difficulties for his loyal Instagram followers. “Each time I’ve done one of these videos it’s been easier to learn the choreography – but that’s not to say it’s easy. I was still in my wardrobe for about an hour and a half last night trying to learn the bloody thing.” 

However, McLean is still working on nailing his dance face – he reckons he looks pretty miserable. “I’m so focused on making sure my legs and my feet are doing the right thing that I don’t even think about my face. I don’t smile at all!” Suo, on the other hand, has mastered the dance face, but disputes any comparison to Destiny’s Child. “I know that Matty likes to call us Breakfast’s Child, but I think we’re more Alvin and the Chipmunks,” she says. “That’s what I channel pre-dance.” 

With Covid leaving the Breakfast team temporarily split in half, each group working different days, John Campbell and Indira Stewart have been left out of all the dance fun. And while the pair’s recent weather antics may suggest they’d be up for a boogie too, McLean says one of them would never consider it. “There’s no point even trying to ask John. We have music in and out of the breaks on the show and he won’t even lift a finger,” says McLean. “He will sit there stone-faced – his whole body just goes rigid when we start dancing.”

That’s a bit of a surprise to me, considering Campbell famously has excellent taste in music and a physicality in interviews that would lend itself well to dance. “He’s all hands,” says McLean. “And so expressive in so many other aspects but you’ll never see him do any kind of dancing. I would love to see him in the privacy of his own home listening to Diggy Dupé or something… If anyone has been to a gig that John Campbell has been at, can you please let me know: does the man dance?”

McLean hopes that after lockdown, Indira Stewart – known already for her singing talents – will join the supergroup. “She’s quite excited, as are we, for a time we can all get back together and maybe she’ll step in and be our Beyoncé,” he says. 

With all this locked down dance practice, you might expect to see McLean sashaying onto the Dancing with the Stars stage when it returns next year. TV reporters have historically had a pretty good run on the show. “Had you asked me two weeks ago I would have said ‘dream show to be on, would absolutely walk away with the trophy’,” McLean says. He’s less confident now: “I would be the David Seymour of our season.”

So, at least for now, McLean says Breakfast’s Child will continue spreading the positive vibes across social media. “If us being idiots for five minutes a day can put a smile on someone’s face then awesome, I’m all for it.”