Pictures: Emily Chalk
Mondays are supposed to be a day off for Three’s weekend news presenter Laura Tupou, but today she’s been called into work, so has taken her two kids to a nearby playground first to burn off some energy.
As she’s speaking to Woman’s Day, she’s also racing round with daughters Amalia, four, and Ava, two, who are zooming down slides. Multitasking is what Laura’s life is all about. Since she loves both her job and her family, she’s got no problem with that.
Earlier this year, Laura’s future was in doubt when Three’s owner Warner Bros. Discovery announced it was closing all its Newshub operations. Facing the loss of her job, she wasn’t sure what to do next.
“It was really sad to say goodbye to that chapter of my life,” admits Laura. “We went through all the emotions. I think all of us were asking ourselves whether we should remain in the industry or do something different. But I genuinely love news. I couldn’t ever really leave because I’d always be wanting to get in on the action and cover events. Also, I believe in it and think it’s important, so I’m in it for the long haul.”
When Laura was offered a role on the revamped ThreeNews, which is now being produced by media company Stuff, she jumped at the chance. On the weekends, she presents the bulletin and the rest of the time, she works as a reporter.
There was some “survivor guilt” in knowing that while things were sorted for her, former colleagues were still out of a job.
“But everyone has been so supportive,” says Laura. “On the day of our first bulletin, from the moment I woke up, I was getting lovely messages from people saying they were thinking of me and hoping it went well.”
Both the news presenter and her partner, Andrew Patterson, have full-on careers – he’s a deputy dean at the University of Auckland Business School – and without help from Laura’s mother Maria, they might struggle to manage the juggle with family life.
“I have an amazing mum who travels every week from Papamoa to Auckland to look after the kids,” says Laura. “She’s been our saving grace. And then Andrew takes care of everything on the weekends when I’m at work.”
It’s a schedule that means the two of them don’t get much family time together.
“But I think at this point in our lives, that’s what works for us. I’m just very lucky that he’s so supportive. If I told him that I had to work 14 days straight, he’d say, ‘OK, just do it, we’ll sort it out’. That’s the kind of person he is.”
Laura, who grew up in Hamilton as one of six children, always imagined having a large family herself, but now she’s not so sure.
“I’m so busy with these two,” she says. “I don’t understand how you’d juggle lots and lots of children.”
Although the girls mostly get on, they’re very different.
“Ava’s very cheeky, confident and sassy,” tells Laura. “She’s just started at kindy and that’s been a whole new adventure. Amalia’s caring and gentle. She’s the calm, reassuring voice and Ava is the loud, bolshie one.”
The next big milestone in their lives will be Amalia starting school next term – and the whole family’s looking forward to it.
“My mum was a teacher and Andrew works at the university. We’re all about education in our household,” says Laura. “Also, Amalia’s tall – she’s a head above her classmates – so she’s ready for school and a chance to run round with the bigger girls. She’s ready emotionally too. She already knows the name of her teacher and what classroom she’s in. We talk about it all the time.”
There’s a photo of her daughters as the screensaver on Laura’s phone. That can come in handy, as with her face free of makeup, even at the age of 34, she looks ridiculously young.
“I still get IDed all the time – even at the shop near work!” she laughs. “A lot of people think I’m a teenager. The other day at a supermarket, the guy saw the picture of the girls on my phone and said, ‘Oh, right, you’ve got kids. That’s OK then.’”
In her younger years, Laura loved to travel and even had a stint living in Poland. These days, life revolves around family. They recently moved to the North Shore, where it’s been fun discovering the parks and beaches in their new neighbourhood.
“This is my stage where I’m just staying still,” says Laura. “If you’d told me that as a 20-year-old, I’d never have believed you. It’s a very different phase, but I’ve been enjoying exploring my backyard.”
There aren’t many opportunities for me-time, but in the evenings when the kids are in bed, she and Andrew like to relax by the fire, where Laura indulges in her secret passion – doing jigsaws.
“I go round op shops and buy them,” she explains. “It’s something to take my mind off things and help me unwind. I’m very much of the mindset that you never do a puzzle twice, so once I’ve completed one, I hand it on to the next person. I’ve sorted out a system for doing puzzles when the kids are around. Instead of taking over the dining table, I do them in a jigsaw folder. Then you can just zip it up at the end of the night and slide it under the bed so no one can ruin the puzzle.”
It’s been especially important to make space for relaxation with the shift to a new style of bulletin and a different way of working. On weekends, Laura’s now also looking after the weather and says she has a new respect for TV3’s weekday weather person Heather Keats, who trained her up.
“We’ve made a few changes,” she says. “We get so many amazing weather photos sent in over the weekend that, on a Sunday, we’ve started putting them at the end of the news. That’s the cool thing about it. We can try things and if they work well, then they stay. If they don’t, then we just do something else.”
Based in the same studio as before and working alongside old colleagues, some things do feel the same. But becoming part of a different news organisation has made for challenges along the way, admits Laura.
“It’s like a new relationship, just figuring each other out and how things should be done. But we’ve been learning as we go and rolling with the punches. It’s all kind of worked out, which has been great.”
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