Stacey Morrison is on a natural high when she catches up with the Weekly. As one of five on-the-ground presenters at Te Matatini for TVNZ 2, she’s just spent five days amongst all the action in Taranaki.
“Everyone was joyous and what I’m happy about is that it seems like it transmitted through the broadcast, which was a proper tribute to the teams and also to the way that they performed,” enthuses Stacey.
Three months after her contract as Flava’s Breakfast radio show co-host publicly ended, she’s in a good place and honest about the fact that she is unsure what she will do next.
In the current economic climate with so many changes in the job market – especially in the media – the last thing she wanted to do was try and flip the narrative.
“It’s just what it is,” she muses. “My contract came to an end and I’m hardly the only person in the industry who’s had that happen recently. I could have probably made something up. More than anything though, it was important to me for others facing a similar situation to realise that they’re not alone. I didn’t want other people – women in particular – to feel like, ‘Oh, my gosh, it’s me,’ because it’s not.”
It was tough saying goodbye to her co-workers Charlie Pome’e and Azura Lane. However, she hasn’t discounted working in radio again. “I’ve got some things happening in that area, I just haven’t got a full time job,” she says.
When Stacey celebrated her 20th year at NZME – plus the same milestone for Flava, which she helped start in 2004 – and departure from the media company on December 13 in Auckland, friends and family, as well as work colleagues past and present, came out in force to support her. “It was pretty much a takeover,” she laughs.
That same day, her last day on air, she lost her voice. She believes it was a physical response to feeling like she’d lost her voice when her contract wasn’t renewed.
“I sounded terrible, but I had an amazing farewell,” she tells. “It was overwhelmingly beautiful. Partially because a lot of my friends and whānau came, and planned how they wanted me to feel uplifted. Emotionally, it was such an uplift.”
Because of the manner of her farewell, she doesn’t feel like she needs to do as much processing.
“It’s important for anyone in this situation to process it however looks or feels right for you,” she says. “It felt overwhelming that so many people would make that much effort for me. Then it just felt like immediate closure, so I’m really lucky that was my process.”
She was also brought to tears when she received a message from her son Hawaiki. Just weeks earlier, he had moved to the Gold Coast, Australia, the day after his 18th birthday.
An emotional video she posted on social media about him leaving home went viral. In it, she admitted how hard it was to have her firstborn leave the nest. Not surprisingly, his message made her cry and her eldest daughter Kurawaka, 16, went into lioness mode, giving Mum a pep talk and saying, “Māmā, you don’t have to worry. You’ve got lots of different skills and there’s lots of things you can do. We’re all here for you – you don’t need to worry. It’s going to be okay.”
Since her radio departure, Stacey’s been considering studying, and keeping busy with emcee and contract media work. She’s been working on the release of her and hubby Scotty’s audiobook of Māori at Home with Penguin Random House NZ, and has some podcast and broadcast projects. Scotty has some books in the pipeline to assist with, plus she’s still on two school boards and chair of the Spark Foundation, which makes you wonder how she fitted in a full-time job in the first place.
“I had someone say to me, ‘I’m really sorry I can’t offer you a full-time job.’ And I said, ‘Oh, I don’t expect or demand that at all.’ And at the moment, this is lovely.”
While she’s naturally an early riser, one thing she is grateful for is not having to get up at 4.30am. Although, she does miss her team and the brainpower of how much you think on live radio.
“I realised I was still banking ideas every day about what to talk about and I don’t need to do that any more. It’s like freeing up storage space on your computer and I love that.”
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