Beyond the cameras and familiar TV persona: The quieter side of Leigh Sales’ life — and what she admits still makes her nervous
The woman who is used to asking the questions
For more than two decades, Leigh Sales was the person sitting across the table asking the difficult questions.
From Lateline to 7.30, the veteran ABC journalist built a reputation for calm, incisive interviews with some of Australia’s most powerful political and public figures.
But these days, Sales finds herself in a very different position.
As host of The Assembly, she is surrounded by young autistic journalism students who are learning to interview some of Australia’s best-known personalities.
And, perhaps unexpectedly, the experienced interviewer admits she sometimes finds herself feeling nervous when the questions are turned on her.
“It’s intimidating” to be the one answering
Sales says she has become accustomed to being in control of an interview.
“When you’re the interviewer, you get used to having all the control,” she told TV WEEK.
“So it’s intimidating to be the person getting the questions, not giving the questions.”
There is even a familiar instinct she has to fight.
“In fact, I find in interviews I often start seizing control!”
It is an unusually revealing admission from someone whose career has largely been built around maintaining control in some of Australia’s most high-pressure broadcasting environments.
The students who keep her on her toes
The Assembly has now reached its third season, with returning students interviewing a new group of high-profile Australians.
This season’s guests include comedians Andy Lee and Dave Hughes, actor Claudia Karvan, musicians Jimmy Barnes and Jessica Mauboy, and Olympic swimming champion Ian Thorpe.
The students themselves are becoming more confident with every season.
For Sales, that creates an unexpected challenge.
“The flip side of everyone getting more confident is they’re more likely to take matters into their own hands rather than follow the plan,” she said.
“So it definitely keeps me on my toes.”
The students aren’t simply reading questions from a script. Their growing confidence means interviews can sometimes move in directions even Sales isn’t expecting.
And that, she says, is part of what makes the program work.
When the questions become very personal
There have been moments when the students’ curiosity has taken them into particularly personal territory.
In the previous season, one student wanted to ask Guy Sebastian about losing his virginity.
This season, another student wants to know whether Ian Thorpe is currently dating anyone.
Sales admits she felt some hesitation about that question, particularly because Thorpe has generally kept his private life away from public discussion.
“I was kind of nervous about that,” she said.
But she also trusted the former Olympic champion to decide for himself how much he wanted to reveal.
“Ian’s very experienced at not answering stuff if he doesn’t want to answer it.”
That balance — allowing genuine curiosity while respecting boundaries — is something Sales appears to value deeply about the program.
And then there are the questions about Leigh herself
The students don’t just challenge their celebrity guests.
They also seem to have taken a particular interest in Sales’ personal life.
According to the presenter, they are constantly trying to find someone they think might be a suitable match for her.
“They’re always picking celebrities and going: ‘Oh, you should go out on a date with him, Leigh.’”
“They’re constantly finding people,” she laughs.
It is a lighter side of Sales that audiences don’t always get to see.
During one episode involving Dave Hughes, the students asked the comedian whether he had ever kissed anyone famous.
When Hughes declined to reveal names, Sales jokingly chimed in.
“Oh, thanks, Hughesy, I appreciate that,” she said, prompting laughter.
For someone who has spent years carefully guarding the line between her professional and private lives, the exchange offered a glimpse of a much more playful Leigh.
Her sons aren’t particularly impressed by her career
Away from the studio, Sales says her two sons have never been particularly interested in their mother’s television career.
They didn’t regularly watch 7.30, Australian Story or The Assembly.
In fact, when they were younger, they were more likely to notice her make-up than anything she had been reporting.
Sales remembers that if she came downstairs wearing make-up, her sons would immediately become suspicious because they associated it with her going to work or heading out.
“They’d be like, ‘Why have you got make-up on?’ Very, very suspicious!”
What they really want, she says, is simply to have their mum around.
“They just like their mum being around.”
The decision that changed her family life
That has become easier since Sales stepped away from 7.30 nearly four years ago.
After 12 years as the program’s host, she moved into a different phase of her career — one that has allowed her to spend more time with her sons while taking on projects that are less tied to the relentless demands of daily news.
She admits there are things she misses about the old job.
Mostly, it is the excitement of a major news day.
She remembers the atmosphere of waiting for a press conference or for something significant to happen, along with the jokes and camaraderie among journalists during those long stretches of waiting.
But when a major story breaks now, her dominant feeling is often relief that she isn’t responsible for covering it.
There is, however, one notable exception.
The ongoing legal drama surrounding Kyle Sandilands and Jackie ‘O’ Henderson is one story she admits she is still following closely.
“I’m reading every word of that,” she joked. “I just want to be on that court case!”
A different kind of pressure
Although Sales no longer faces the nightly pressure of being “front and centre”, she hasn’t left stress behind entirely.
For her, motherhood brings its own form of constant concern.
“I think, whatever age your kids are, parenting is always a lot,” she said.
She describes it as a kind of low-level stress that comes simply from loving people and worrying about what might happen to them.
It is a much more personal reflection than the audience would traditionally have heard from the journalist behind the news desk.
Why The Assembly feels different
Perhaps that is why Sales has embraced The Assembly so enthusiastically.
The program allows her to work with young journalists while also giving her permission to step outside the polished, tightly controlled world of traditional news interviewing.
She says she would happily be interviewed by the students herself.
The reason is simple: there is no hidden agenda.
“There’s no agenda, no snarkiness. No one’s laying traps for anyone, no one’s trying to embarrass anyone.”
Instead, she says, the questions come from genuine curiosity.
That is also what appears to have surprised her most about the experience.
After years of interviewing people who were often carefully prepared for every possible question, Sales is now surrounded by young interviewers who aren’t necessarily interested in following the conventional rules.
And sometimes, they ask exactly what they want to know.
A life that is becoming less predictable
Sales is also making room for projects outside television.
Alongside The Assembly and Australian Story, she has continued mentoring emerging journalists and is working on a cookbook, The Holiday Kitchen, with her friend Gwen Blake.
The idea began during a holiday when the pair discovered how much they enjoyed cooking together.
Sales says she loves informal entertaining — friends gathered around the kitchen bench, food being prepared and people talking and laughing around the table.
It is a very different picture from the intense newsroom environments in which Australian audiences first came to know her.
And perhaps that is the most interesting chapter of Leigh Sales’ career now.
After years spent asking everyone else the questions, she is increasingly comfortable revealing small pieces of the person behind the microphone — while still keeping much of her private world firmly her own.