Gold Logie nominee Poh Ling Yeow: ‘I still feel like an outsider’
The Gold Logie nominees for 2025 have only just been announced when TV WEEK sits down for a chat with Poh Ling Yeow. But Poh admits that she’s already thought about what she would say in her acceptance speech if she won.
“Embarrassingly, yes,” she laughs. “I cannot lie! I’ll definitely give a shout- out to all the lonesome kids out there, because I was such a little lonesome kid… Something to the migrant kids or to anyone who’s felt on the outside.”
Poh knows who she’ll give a shout-out to, if she gets to make a Logies acceptance speech. ((Credit: Paul Suesse))
Malaysian-born Poh moved to Australia with her family at the age of nine. She burst onto Australian TV screens in the first season of MasterChef Australia and, in the 16 years since, she’s become one of TV’s most popular faces.
She’s hosted cooking shows, including Poh’s Kitchen and Snackmasters, she’s competed in I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! and LEGO Masters Bricksmas Special, and she’s returned to MasterChef as a contestant, mentor and, most recently, as a judge.
And, yet, she says she still sometimes feels like an outsider.
“It’s just something that stays with you,” she explains. “It’s a really powerful thing, those formative years when you’re at school and you’re feeling a bit on the outer. I feel like that stays with you forever.”
When Poh was growing up in Adelaide, her family ran a newsagency. With the chance to read every magazine – “you open it carefully so you don’t bend the spine!” – she was very aware of the TV WEEK Logies.
“It was a really special thing to watch all the beautiful people on the red carpet,” she remembers.
Although she was a “really shy” child, she imagined herself being on TV one day.
“In fantasy,” she adds with a laugh. “But never in reality, that’s for sure.”
By the time Poh auditioned for MasterChef, she had established herself as a professional artist and had also worked as a make-up artist and graphic designer. Her aim in going on the show wasn’t to become a TV star, but to get enough exposure to publish a cookbook.
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“I just wanted to record my family recipes, because I was 35 years old and I’d started to realise that much of my culture had slipped through my fingers.”
Poh’s success in the first season of MasterChef – she finished runner-up to Julie Goodwin – was a “mega moment” for her family.
“They’d watched all this chaos play out over the years and now they could see it having a purpose,” she explains. “It made me grow a lot closer to my mum and dad, for sure.”
Poh’s mum, Christina, passed away in 2022, but Poh knows what she’d say about the Gold Logie nomination.
“She was always very reluctant to give me a straight-up compliment. Instead, she’d give me a fake disapproving look and be like: ‘You’ve done all right.’”
The nomination for Gold comes as Poh is in her second year as a MasterChef judge. She’s been open about how hard she’s found being a judge, as opposed to being a contestant.
“All of last year, I was just wigging out the whole time,” she remembers. “I was just faking it till I made it. I don’t feel like an authority at all. I very much feel like I’m a home cook.”
But, this year, things have started to change.
“I do feel a lot more settled and I do feel like I have something to offer, which is the mentoring role. I keep in touch with a lot of the contestants and that brings me a lot of joy.”
Poh’s honesty about her initial discomfort in being a judge led to a rumour – completely untrue – that she was leaving the show. She says her agent, Matt Phipps, who is also her ex-husband, warned her about being so honest.
“Matt actually said to me: ‘You know, that could be read very negatively.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I don’t really care because I just feel that people know I always speak my mind. If someone wants to take it and spin it into a story, I can always negate it.’”
Poh says she loves having Matt as her agent. “It’s really good because he knows me like the back of his hand, so we get to hash it out. We get quite heated, but we know it’s all good. We always make really good decisions together.”
Over the years, Poh’s private life has made the headlines. Not only her continuing friendship with Matt – who is now married to her best friend, Sarah Rich – but also her second marriage to Jono Bennett, who was working as a production assistant on MasterChef when they met.
Does it make it hard for her to date, knowing people are so interested?
“The trick is not to date!” she laughs. “I haven’t dated since I broke up with Jono. I’m feeling OK about it.
“I’ve been married twice; I’m clearly not going to have kids, so I’m just living it up. I’m really loving being footloose and fancy-free, and being able to travel at the drop of a hat and take on whatever jobs I want. I live an amazing life.
“I’m not feeling that need for companionship. I’m a bit of a lone ranger, to be honest.”
So who is she planning to take to the Logies as her plus one? That will definitely be her dad, Steven.
“I’m worried about how much he’s going to embarrass me!” she laughs again. “But I’d love him to have that experience. He’ll be so chuffed for me.”
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