Interview: Cat Deeley, TV presenter

Published on Monday 18 January 2010 14:30

THE day of our interview, Cat Deeley is wearing black jeans, black beaten-up boots, a leather jacket and a white scarf with tassels, which all sounds quite rock chick until you add the fact that her hair is in pigtails.

She had to be up early for a radio interview and didn't want to go out with wet hair because her mum would kill her for that sort of thing, so she plaited it instead. A cute, girlish touch. Very Deeley, somehow. The ex-model and TV presenter, who has hosted everything from MTV with Edith Bowman and SM:TV Live with Ant and Dec, to the more mainstream Stars In Their Eyes, Brit Awards, Royal Variety Performance and now So You Think You Can Dance, is famous for her glamorous frocks and high heels, her big blonde hair and big bright smile, but underneath she always had that scrubbed, girl-next-door quality that made you suspect she rushed home to sit in her Eeyore jim-jams with a cocoa rim round her mouth.

Now 33, Deeley has built a hugely successful career out of good looks, innate confidence and effervescent warmth. She acts as big sister and cheerleader to SYTYCD contestants but there's something deceptively fluffy about her. It's hard to be that natural in front of a camera. And, yes, she's very likeable but I wouldn't mind being a fly on the wall if anyone mistook her for a bimbo. She's no fool.

One of the few children's TV presenters who has developed into an adult broadcaster, her career has been strategically managed to make her as versatile as possible… children… adults… music… comedy. Two years ago, she was offered her big break in the States, presenting what was to become one of the biggest shows on American television, So You Think You Can Dance. She says she approached it as "a great adventure" because seeing it as a permanent move would have been too scary. Now the show has been brought to Britain, she commutes between Los Angeles and London to present it in both countries.

As well as her London home, the Birmingham-born girl has a house in America, plus a horse and a dog. Her mother keeps telling her to stop buying animals or she'll never come home. The house overlooks Benedict Canyon, an affluent area in the Santa Monica Hills, west of Beverly Hills, that used to boast Cary Grant and Henry Fonda among its inhabitants.

"It's very white, square, Palm Springs architecture and you can see right the way down to the ocean. The sun sets opposite my house which is gorgeous. "It's so funny, Catherine …" (her super-polished people skills make you smile; she uses your name like she's known you a lifetime) "…but I thought I would get really blas about it and think, so what? But when I am sitting there with my glass of something delicious, whatever the cocktail of the night is, I look out and it's just so beautiful ..." And that, Cat, is the moment when you think, where did it all go wrong? "Exactly," she says, and for a moment, her voice becomes pure Brummie and inflected with rich enthusiasm. "Exactly."

Deeley is always glass half-full, which can be irritating for those of us with glasses half-empty (can't she see how quickly it's draining away?) but her optimism is a big part of her. Like the flower of most people's personalities, you can see the stem and roots trailing right back into childhood. If you had to make up an environment for Cat Deeley to grow up in, you couldn't imagine anything more apt than the truth. She really did live in an idyllic little road called Poetry Drive. It was all houses with families and the gardens had connecting gates so none of the children had to go on to the main road. There was a stream at the bottom of the gardens where the children caught frogs and a little girl called Helen lived across the water from Cat so Helen's granddad built a miniature bridge to connect them.

"It was kind of amazing, just outside Birmingham but a little pocket of loveliness. We'd all celebrate, different people throwing parties, and ours was Bonfire Night. Everybody would come over and have hot dogs and we'd all be outside in the garden and play midnight rugby." (Maybe that's why each 4 July she throws a party with hot dogs at her American home for SYTYCD finalists.) Poetry Drive was certainly very sociable. "Everybody hung out with everybody else and the kids ran from one garden to another."

Deeley exudes an inner confidence that can be traced back to her parents. Her father was a patent maker for car companies. They'd send him a 2D drawing and he'd make the first 3D model out of resin or wood. Her mother worked for social security but stayed at home after Cat and her brother were born. Between them, the Deeleys passed on an empowering message to their two children. "My mum and dad were definitely strict with me but they were very much of the opinion that I could be anything I wanted to be. I was frequently told that, which I think is an exceptional thing for a child. If I couldn't do something they would be very honest with me. They weren't delusional and it wasn't blind love. But even if there was criticism it was incredibly constructive."

She doesn't perform in front of her parents, though. "Oh I couldn't do it with them there," she says. Her dad would only say – and she resurrects the strong Brummie accent: "She's always been a big 'ead."

Her brother went on to work in finance and investment. "We do completely different jobs but he's incredibly successful at what he does and I do all right too. It obviously worked as a mantra for kids." She liked school and left with four A levels. She always advises children who want to work in entertainment to stick in at school first. "You might not use Pythagoras's theorem ever again, or have to name all of Henry VIII's wives, but I know when I go into a meeting I am taken seriously. People can't just dismiss me because I have no education and that's very important."

Did she not find it hard, then, to be judged entirely on appearance when she went into modelling after school? "No, you can take whatever you like out of life's experiences. You can approach something like modelling and it could be completely vacuous where you just turn up on a surface level. Or you can say, every day I am working with a new set of people and I can find out about them and how does this work and how does that work? Let's see, why would you be paid only 60 quid to do Vogue but 10,000 to do a catalogue? OK, I get it, the prestige of it. So you learn the business and, actually, it's something I apply to my job now. There are some jobs I would do for no money whatsoever and others where I want to be paid."

When she joined SM:TV she was a complete novice. "I had never done a comedy sketch in my life and I didn't know anything about timing, a set-up, a gag, a punchline … I sat and watched those two boys, Ant and Dec, who had been working together since they were 13 or something, and if you sit and watch and keep your eyes open, you can learn so much." She is still close to the duo, seeing them regularly in London and LA. "It takes about two glasses of wine and then we're straight back where we were."

It's when you talk to Deeley about being a woman in television that you sense how tightly her head is screwed on. The Arlene Phillips debacle, for example. Phillips was booted off Strictly Come Dancing, we were led to believe, for being too old, a fact that made even deputy Prime Minister Harriet Harman exercised enough to comment. Now Phillips is a judge on SYTYCD. Deeley cautions that she wasn't in Britain at the time of the row. "But I can tell you what I feel about it. I think whether you are a man or a woman, you can never assume that it's going to go on for ever and ever. One moment you are the hottest thing and nobody can touch you and the next you are not there. You have to be very, very aware. You can choose to believe everything that everybody is telling you and you really are the greatest, the smartest, the most beautiful and most funny and you will be young forever. Or you can go, listen, this isn't always going to be this way so how can I approach my career so that I do have longevity and can diversify?"

Deeley insists Phillips is massively experienced and has been indispensable on the show. Yes, but is experience valued as much as looks? For example, has Deeley ever been tempted to resort to surgery? "To be honest, I've never felt that pressure. I am far, far from perfect and there are lots of things that people could say. Maybe if you did your hair like this … or if you had bigger boobs … but nobody has ever said them. I don't know if I have just been lucky or if it's because if someone did turn round and say them to me, I would laugh hysterically in their face." I read she's had surgery to have her ears pinned back. She bursts out laughing. "No, but my dad and my brother do have very big ears."

Deeley says she has never placed emphasis on her looks and was always the first on SM:TV to don a stupid wig, thick glasses, funny teeth and call herself Cat The Dog. But that's not entirely true, is it? She takes strict control over photographs and won't do interviews without picture approval. "If someone appears controlling," she says, "it's usually because something bad has happened to them." A photographer once made a lot of money by manipulating a shot of her. Then there was the time when a magazine airbrushed her clothes out of the picture. "I have been completely taken advantage of before and just refuse to have it done again," she says, with a glint of rather admirable steel.

She has always had focus. As an interviewer, she goes for empathy rather than toughness but prepares assiduously. Kylie Minogue chose her for her first interview about breast cancer. Why? Well, they had known each other for some years, explains Deeley. "I think she wanted a woman to do it with her actually, someone she knew, and hopefully, she knew I'd be respectful."

But friendship can be a difficult starting point for an interview. Did she see it as talking to a friend or as an opportunity? "Both. It had to be both. It's an incredibly important topic which needs certain facts and figures to be discussed. I remember her saying she knew something was wrong and she went to a doctor first but he failed to diagnose. You knew that there would be women sitting at home going 'I just know'… you know how sometimes it's a little bit intuitive?"

Even giving people confidence to go to a doctor was a big thing. "Women as a whole take care of everybody and don't take care of themselves as much as they should. Then if you go to a doctor and he tells you what you want to hear, which is that everything is fine, it's easy to go home and say OK. Push it under the carpet. But Kylie didn't. She stuck with it and she went, actually, it's not fine." Did their relationship change as a result of the interview? "Yes it did. I was incredibly flattered that she asked me. There's a sense of camaraderie between us."

The experience gave her a new insight into the woman she thought she knew. "You go and see her in an arena somewhere and she's in costumes with the dancers and people are singing along to her lyrics and she seems almost indestructible. But actually, she's just a girl. You see that vulnerability. Yes, she can fill arenas and people wear her image on a T-shirt but it actually doesn't mean anything. The minute she talks to someone and makes even five women go and get checked out, it's suddenly priceless."

That is at the heart of Deeley's attitude to fame. "It's this weird dichotomy: it can be completely worthless or priceless." In fact, sometimes she thinks fame doesn't really exist. How can it not exist? "It's just people recognising you on the street … it doesn't really mean anything." Unless it translates into something else. Eight years ago she was sitting in a London restaurant having a Sunday roast when a little boy came over and sat on her knee. He was cute, cheeky, precocious and she fell for him. Then she realised he was ill. He was a Great Ormond Street patient and still is. From then on, her long association with the hospital began. She was reunited with that little boy for a recent campaign and will meet up with him for his 16th birthday this month.

Deeley also works for UNICEF and Soccer Aid and has a sense of paying back for the good luck of her own life. "The minute you turn fame into something good, you can get attention and attention raises awareness and raising awareness gets equipment and getting equipment saves kids' lives. Then it's worth something. Fame is nothing otherwise. It gets you a couple of free handbags and reservations at restaurants. But the minute you start using it to make a difference … then it becomes something."

Years ago, Deeley said in an interview that you should never cut love out of life. But maybe when you are young and idealistic you think you can have it all. She is still single, though for the last 18 months has been with actor Jack Huston, nephew of actors Angelica and Danny Huston. Has her high-profile career forced her to make sacrifices in the last ten years? "I think you have to learn balance, and I'm getting better at that." She takes time for yoga and holidays now, time for herself. "Part of it is growing up, part learning balance, part meeting the right person. You could not work at all and still not meet the right person."

When she moved to the US, she broke up with long-term partner Mark Whelan, a PR executive. Did she ditch her old life in favour of a new one, her romance for her career? "It was more of an accident. It wasn't a master plan or anything like that. It just ran its course and I think you get to the point where you think, fresh start. New things. We all do it. My way was getting on a plane and going to America. Other women sit in a chair and go, right, I want all my hair cut off. It's always emotional upheaval so you throw yourself into good stuff rather than negative."

She did once say that her relationship with Whelan had been more deep friendship than great romance. So what is she looking for in life? Does she want grand passion or is she happy to fly solo? "I would love at some stage to have someone I was with all the time. Absolutely. I think most women would. But you also have to operate as an individual. I don't believe in 'two people become one'. That doesn't work. You are two individuals and you travel on a journey together and you feed and thrive and enjoy each other and become the biggest support system in each other's lives but I don't believe two become one. You are two individuals with individual opinions and two brains and life experiences and talents. I think the thing is to find a great partnership."

Earlier in the interview, Deeley had said she loved her job and couldn't imagine giving it up any time soon. But maybe, she had acknowledged, there would come a time when she didn't want to pour herself into a sparkly frock any more. "Maybe," she said, "I will want a baby one day." If that doesn't happen, will it be a great loss? "I don't know," she hesitates. "It's something that perhaps I'd like in the future but you'd have to ask me in ten years' time."

Of Huston, she says: "He's an amazingly talented actor and I hugely respect him. He's funny and witty and incredibly intelligent and I just have a lovely time with him. We laugh an awful lot."

Right now, she doesn't want to give up either America or London. Why should she when she doesn't need to? But she's sowing the seeds of future possibilities. She has just started her own jewellery line on QVC, inspired by vintage jewellery in flea markets. She is also establishing a production company to deal with an idea she has for a new television show. It involves Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics and came about after a serendipitous encounter between the two on a flight from New York. Deeley talks a lot about luck. It happens to everybody if only people were alert to it, she insists. "I think there are so many people where luck comes along and they don't even see it. You have to be prepared. You have to be ready with your eyes wide open so that when luck comes along you grab it with both hands and it becomes opportunity."

She loves the feeling Obama has brought to America. Rebirth. Bush, she says, had simply made Americans feel like a joke in every comedian's repertoire. "There were no redeeming features to the man as far as I could see." But now there's a sense of expectation and possibility that gives new vibrance to her adopted country. It simply encapsulates her outlook on life. You get the feeling that if you asked Deeley in ten years' time what the future holds for her, her answer would be exactly the same as it is right now. "It's a very, very exciting time." r

So You Think You Can Dance is on Saturday, BBC1, 7pm, www.bbc.co.uk/soyouthinkyoucandance

&#149 This article was first published in Scotland on Sunday, January 17, 2010