You could hear a pin drop,” Kylie Minogue says about the point, in episode two, when she starts crying about the impact her former boyfriend, INXS singer Michael Hutchence, had on her. “I’m like, I know I’m going to cry at some point in this goddamn documentary. When’s the point going to be? But I also knew that I was holding on to a lot of stuff.”
This month, Netflix released a new three-part documentary, simply titled Kylie, exploring the life and times of one of the world’s most enduring (and media-shy) pop stars; the singer behind era-defining tracks such as I Should Be So Lucky, Can’t Get You Out of My Head, Spinning Around and, more recently, Padam Padam.
It’s a triumph; an intimate and affecting tale of an intensely private star, which spans her earliest teenage years as an actress in Neighbours to her incipient pop stardom, global fame, her various stylistic reinventions, her love affairs (notably with her Neighbours co-star Jason Donovan, followed by Hutchence), her initial breast cancer diagnosis in 2005 and, ultimately, the woman she is today.
Above all, it is a moving portrait of a 58-year-old woman that differs from the sort of PR-driven style of documentary content we have become accustomed to of late. Here is Minogue not so much as you’ve never seen her before, but Minogue the person she has chosen not to show us before.
We meet over Zoom, and while I wait for her to appear on screen from her home town of Melbourne, I hear lots of shuffling and groaning in the background. “Urrgggh, am I on?” she says, finally popping up wearing a white baseball cap, a black sleeveless T-shirt and a white oversized Chanel cardigan. “I had to get on my iPhone. Trust me, it’s easier this way. I couldn’t put you through the hassle of me trying to connect on to my laptop. We’ve all got lives to live.”
Her team had warned me in advance that Minogue likes her interviews short, 20 to 30 minutes max. Determined to break that rule, I try to put her at ease. Guess what, I say, we’ve got three things in common. “Oooh what?” Well, I used to live on the same street as you during the ’90s and early noughties. “Shut up!” she says, screaming. “I’ve got such good memories of that time. What are the others?” I’m 5 foot 1, too. We both agree life is better in heels. “But I have recently succumbed to the trainer,” she adds, rolling her eyes. “And what’s the third?” Well, we’ve both had cancer. “Oh,” she says. She asks when I was diagnosed, but then quickly retreats back into her protective shell. We leave it for now.
The three episodes of the documentary are concisely told through Minogue’s eyes, with each one focusing on a specific decade of her life, namely the ’80s (it also touches on her years growing up in the ’70s with her accountant dad, ballet dancer mother and her brother and sister), the ’90s and then the noughties. She is seen delving through boxes of old photographs, picking out her favourite images and talking to camera, but the real gems are the never-seen-before grainy reels of personal video footage taken during her affairs with Donovan and Hutchence.
Was there anything she chose not to delve into too deeply? I know what she is going to say but I try my luck anyway. “Well, the health issues, of course.”
When Minogue was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005, she was forced to make an announcement days after finding out because she was imminently due to perform on stage as part of her Showgirl tour. She had no option but to speak out. “I always knew it would be difficult emotionally revisiting my cancer diagnosis and what that was like, not only for me but also for my family. The basics were documented very publicly at the time, but I felt that if there was ever a time to open up a little more about what that journey has meant for me, this might be it. I had to follow my instinct and let trust dictate that it was OK to let people in. Cancer really is a journey and a life-changer. And I’m one of the lucky ones. I wanted to share this so someone out there feels less alone.”
The “Kylie effect”, as it was known at the time, was responsible for a large increase in women in Australia booking mammograms as a result of her speaking up. (In the documentary, Minogue reveals that she experienced a second breast cancer diagnosis in 2021, and is “well today”.)
“Yes, verbalising it is useful,” she says, but admits it is not always easy to say everything you’re feeling. “You open the door, but in doing so you end up overcompensating – essentially you say too much, as if you’re inviting people to move in, but you’re not. I will talk to a girlfriend for hours about it, my specialist or my family, but it’s not fair to put it out there in neat soundbites. I am so careful to never allude to the fact I’m telling the entire story, because that would be a really long story and you know it’s already complicated and then it gets more complicated and you just want to get on with your life.”
Her hesitancy to speak up, not only about cancer but also life in general, is obvious in the documentary. This is clearly, and understandably, a self-protective measure. She has learnt the hard way from being in the public eye from such a young age. Does she find herself naturally putting up barriers with anyone new she meets? “I’m open with people who are not press,” she says. “I’ve been burnt enough times. I’ve been conditioned to answer like I’m playing chess – and I don’t play chess. But neither do I want to imprison myself. I’m very on/off, one moment I’ve got a show to do, the next I’m in a top knot at home wearing a thousand-year-old T-shirt.”
Interestingly, the one area she is more voluble about is her love life. The presence, or the importance of, Hutchence looms large throughout; how during their two years together (1989-91) he taught her to be still, true to herself, not to mention how respectful he was of her own artistry despite the vast musical chasm that separated them. Footage of her arriving at his funeral underscores the grief she went through when he unexpectedly died by suicide in 1997.
Was he the love of her life? “Yes, probably. I’ve had lots of relationships, some were love, some were not. My relationship with him, or our relationship at the time, was not for that long, but it had a profound effect on me.”
I don’t need her to tell me that she and Donovan, another ex, are still good mates. “Yeah, yeah, we are. I’ve texted him some doozies while I was looking through all the old photos and video footage of us together. I told him he better start collecting things for his doco.” Was their famous snogging scene on Neighbours the moment of realisation there was something between them? “We fancied each other. The love story in the show came first and then it became a real thing.”
The whole Minogue family recently got together and watched Kylie. “It was so emotional watching it with them,” she says. “When the Neighbours clip of Scott and Charlene kissing came up, my nephew turned round to me and said, ‘Oh, that was quite the kiss!’” It sounds like they’re a tight-knit family. “That’s definitely the case. If I didn’t have that, I don’t know what the story would be. I still need them. I still behave like a little girl around them. Actually, my mum took me to my visit with the optometrist this morning. I could still be 16.”
Does she intend to continue living in Australia? “We’ll see.” The lure of performance still beats strongly in her bones – she makes clear in the doco that she lives to perform, to sing and to dance. “It’s not healthy for me not to do that. If there’s an offer, I’d be there. I’m a ‘yes’ kind of girl.”
We discuss how the perception of women ageing has changed since we were young and whether it has affected how she sees herself as a performer now. “When should a pop star stop being sexy? I got over that hump after cancer. I’m past that now and the younger generation don’t care.” She says her friends are more her own age group, but she spends a lot of time with her team, who are younger. “Something I find absolutely hilarious absolutely flunks with them.”
Since we are now more than an hour and 15 minutes in, emboldened, I ask, might there be a boyfriend? I expect reticence and obfuscation, so I’m surprised when she says: “No, I don’t have a boyfriend. I was in a relationship and when that ended I realised I was OK on my own. I’m definitely getting pickier.” Really, so what’s off the table now? “Narcissists. I’ve dated one, and I’m very grateful I now have that knowledge. That’s like my red hot ‘no’.”
Next year, Minogue will celebrate the 40th anniversary of her pop career. Are there plans to tour? “I’m probably not meant to say this, but yes, I am.” And what about acting, because, after all, that’s how she started? “I would love to do a musical, to act again, to be in the hands of a director who can get me there.” Who is she listening to now? “Sombr,” she replies immediately. “I sent him a message or maybe he sent me a message, I don’t know. I put him on one of my playlists for some promo I was doing. I’m no longer shy to send a message to someone when I want them to know they are amazing. Otherwise I love yacht rock [soft rock], indie folk. I love Wolf Alice, and the last big show I saw was Coldplay, always Coldplay. I will go to every show they ever do.” She takes a breath then sings. “And it was all yellowwwwww.”
We’ve now been going for an hour and 40 minutes. Not bad, I say. I could have asked you another 52,000 questions. “Well, I would have given you 473,000 contradicting answers,” she replies. This one is easy – what’s your favourite cocktail? “Pisco sour. It’s very frisky, it’s got a lot to it, it looks good, it tastes nice and it has a good mouthfeel. That’s a wine term, by the way.” We both collapse laughing.
Kylie is on Netflix now.
The Sunday Times Style magazine / News Licensing
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