Two more contestants left I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Here! Australia last night.
Child star Frankie Muniz opted to leave of his own accord and Michelle Bridges was sadly eliminated.
During her time on I’m A Celeb, Michelle proved she’s a serious teamplayer with the courage of a lion.
For instance, the celebrity trainer fearlessly ate three pig penises so no one else had to. Not to mention she shouted, “Oh my God, this is amazing,” when she was dropped down the side of a cliff.
The Weekly spoke to Michelle shortly after she left the jungle to discuss her experience…
Read our full I’m A Celeb interview with Michelle Bridges below:
The Weekly: What was the best thing you experienced in the jungle?
Michelle: Oh, there were so many things; I really can’t just list one, but certainly, some of the people in the jungle were really fun to get to know and I forged some really good friendships in there, and a couple of them I know for sure that we will remain friends on the outside.
Particularly some of them who only live five minutes from where I live; we’re already organising dog walks and it’s nice. It’s one of the reasons why I wanted to go [on I’m A Celeb]. I wanted to meet new people. And yeah, just form some connections. So that was great.
The trials were hilarious and lots and lots of fun, so wacky, but the wackier the better I think. Then just also, I guess, seeing how resilient you can really be with absolutely no contact at all with your family and friends for upwards of almost a month.
That was I guess, very eye opening and it gave me a real chance to consider all the things in my life. What things are important; what things you can let go – I didn’t miss my phone once. And I realise it probably, like most people, plays way too big a role in my life. And that is definitely one thing that I’m going to be dialling back on.
What was the hardest challenge to get through?
Probably the hardest one would have been the eating challenge. Yeah, no doubt about that. I mean, really, do you really want to eat that stuff? It was purely out of; everyone was starving. And I wanted to come back with the stars to make sure that we all get a good meal. So I took a total hit for the team. One that I thought, ‘God, am I really gonna do this?’ And yes, I did. On national television. My mom would be proud [laughs].
What did the pig penises taste like?
Like seriously, I just kept saying to myself, ‘It’s just calamari, it’s just calamari, it’s just calamari! It’s not three pig penises…’
I feel like this forever shall be known; I have this vision of someone in the supermarket coming up to me and saying, ‘Oh you’re the girl who ate the penises.’ Yep. That was me.
Through your chat with Callum Hole, you brought great awareness to perimenopause and menopause, and through talking about your charity – Women’s Community Shelters – you shed a light on the accommodation crisis homeless women in Australia currently face. Why was it important to you to advocate for women’s issues?
I’ve built my career around empowering women. It’s what I do. It’s what I believe in. And it’s authentically me. That’s why I’ve been working with Women’s Community Shelters for several years now. And I placed them as a really high priority. Because it’s a real issue in our country.
We have 54,000 women across Australia every night who are homeless, due to domestic violence. And if they’re fortunate enough to know there is a safe place for them to go where they’ll be protected and taken care of and get their feet back on the ground and assisted in starting a new life. If they’re lucky enough to know that, basically, one out of two women who actually do knock on the door, one of them is going to be turned away because there isn’t enough space. And that is happening across Australia every night and that’s a reality right now in 2024.
To me, that is a very, very deep issue in our culture that we haven’t been addressing and possibly haven’t even been talking about.
And speaking about menopause, going back to that, many of these women who are on the streets are also going through menopause. The biggest growing population of women on streets are in their 50s; that’s for various reasons.
But the whole menopause thing for me was really important work too, because it’s authentic. I’m going through it myself. And I just feel it, again, is another topic that isn’t spoken about because there’s a lot of shame and taboo attached around it.
And then if there is a conversation, it’s usually framed in the narrative of ‘menopause is a jail sentence, it’s terrible, your life changes completely.’ So women have fear; not only are they not talking about it, because it’s a shame, but now they also have a fear around it.
So, my purpose is to reframe menopause in a totally different way. To look at it as a time in your life, where you should be proud that you’ve got there, and you have so much to offer as a woman at that age. You’re through that point of your life where you’re in the hustle or you’re in the office and you’re trying to make a difference in your career and you’ve got kids. Now is the time for you to come out of that as a woman who has earned her stripes, earned her scars, and has so much maturity and wisdom to offer those that come in after us. And you should be highlighted. You shouldn’t be sidelined. You should be put in the front row because you’ve got so much to offer.
And women in that age group deserve more and they deserve better, and they deserve an educational piece around this really profound time in their life where they’re at a crossroads so that they can actually handle [menopause] with grace and they can also handle it with a holistic solution as opposed to sitting in a cloud of shame and taboo.
Basically, I want to reframe the way in which we think about menopause and reframe the way in which we think about these incredible women who are not only mothers or sisters or aunties or grandmothers. They have so much more to offer. Why would we only sideline them? We should be lifting them up.
You touched on it before, but are there any I’m A Celeb contestants that you now consider a friend?
Absolutely. 100 per cent, Candace [Warner] and Brittany [Hockley] because we all live so close to each other and we’ve all got dogs and we’ll be definitely doing that. And we’ve already organised lunches as well. We just instantly gravitated towards each other. We’ve already started to plan stuff together that we want to do.
I also just fell in love with Skye [Wheatley] and she would have never even come into my orbit if I hadn’t done this show. I really love her. She’s gorgeous and she was like a sponge when it came to learning about training and nutrition. She was, like, really getting into my head about what she wanted to learn, which I found really interesting and fun to share with her.
Oh and Steven [K Amos]. Oh my God, that man! I really connected with him and we had so much fun together.
Who do you think will win I’m A Celeb this year?
Well, it’s not who I think will win. It’s really what the Australian public are going to think and there’s only a few more days to go and there’s only a few more trials to go.
I would love Australia to really see some of the strength and power in those women that are remaining. And all three that are left have got a lot to offer. Ellie [Cole], to me, is such a powerful woman and such an incredible influence to so many. You know, you look at a woman like Ellie, and I don’t have any excuses as to why I can’t do X, Y and Z.
The woman can do almost anything and she hasn’t had a leg her entire life. And she’s a Paralympian but she’s also a beautiful woman inside and out. So, I guess I’d love her to win. But will the Australian public say that? I’m not sure.
What’s the first thing you’ll do when you get home? Aside from obviously hugging your son?
A hot shower and a bath. I think I need a good 24 hour scrub to get the dirt and the smell of the fire out of my skin, my hair and my fingernails. I’ve had a couple of showers already but I still don’t feel 100 per cent clean, so I’ll be booking myself into a day spa.
Watch I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! on Channel Ten and 10play.
