In her most candid interview yet with The Weekly, Rebecca Gibney shares how a shock autism and ADHD diagnosis put her on a path to self-acceptance and inner peace.
Ever since Rebecca Gibney first appeared on our screens in the 1980s, she has been a favourite at The Weekly, so much so that team members would compete to be the one to interview her. When the opportunity came up again this issue, the current roster of writers once again vied for the job.
Sitting down with Rebecca is like having a session with a kindness doula. She preaches empathy and leaves you feeling good. And thanks to her chatterbox friendliness, an interview with Rebecca is, from a journalistic perspective, easy. The New Zealand-born actor lives with an openness that is rare for a star of her stature.
“I’m an oversharer,” she agrees, laughing. “I’m a huge empath. I’ve always said, if I wasn’t an actor, I’d be a psychologist or something in the caring industry.”
Rebecca’s authenticity online
Rebecca joined Instagram more than a decade ago and embraced the chance to share unguarded moments from her life. Highlights include an impromptu dance to a Fatboy Slim track with an ironing board as a guitar, and wisdom from her much-loved mother, Mamma Shirl, who is as familiar to Rebecca’s fans as a recurring character on prime-time TV. Rebecca also freely posts about mental health and the importance of asking for help when you need it.
Not long before our conversation about her detour from acting to quiz-show hosting, she took to social media to pour out her feelings in a lengthy reflection on suicide.
She has been frank about her long battle with anxiety, but this confession – in which she revealed she had thought about ending her own life – showed previously hidden depths to her pain.
“I just knew I wanted it over,” she wrote of the experience, which came during the anxiety plaguing her in her 30s. “It was while I was writing a letter to my mum that I suddenly realised that she would never understand and would never get over losing me. It made me stop. I was lucky. I got help, I found a therapist. And with baby steps, I eventually came home to myself.”
“I didn’t expect to make headlines”
Her purpose in writing was to remind others that help is always available. The response shocked her.
“I didn’t expect it to make headlines. I didn’t expect to have people calling me from New Zealand saying, ‘Are you okay?’ I was just trying to help people,” she says.
“A lot of the DMs I got after that post were, ‘You saved my life today.’ ‘You really helped me.’ I cried buckets when I read some of the messages.”
Rebecca has been in the public eye over five decades, and she’s aware of the power of her profile. She believes it’s worth being vulnerable if it makes others feel less alone. She wants to be clear: she’s okay. But she has had a tough year, and she knows how hard it can be to see through those dark times to the other side. She knows the difference a few kind words can make. And that’s why she’s choosing to talk about a new battle publicly today, as she sits down with us to reveal it for the very first time.
“Everyone says, ‘You’re so brave bringing it up.’ It’s not being brave,” she says. “We’ve got to allow ourselves to say, ‘Yep, I feel terrible.’
“It is okay to not be okay,” she adds emphatically.
Critical success and her year of yes
When The Weekly last caught up with Rebecca in June 2025, she was riding a wave of acclaim. She had become the fourth woman ever to be inducted into the Logies Hall of Fame, and her season of Dancing With The Stars was about to air. She was reading scripts and thrilled, she told The Weekly, to find herself with an abundance of interesting work as she entered her 60s.
Then it all caught up with her.
“This year’s been challenging in so many ways,” she says. “My year of saying yes is coming to an end because of challenges.”
Her new mindset is looking after herself and focusing on the things that matter most. “A year of no,” Rebecca jokes gently. There was no particular catalyst. This reckoning had been a long time coming.
As autumn cooled into winter last year, Rebecca followed Dancing With The Stars with a play. It was the first time she’d been on stage in 22 years, and the schedule was punishing – eight shows a week for eight weeks.
“It’s tough,” she reveals. “When you stand on stage and you’re working your heart out with other performers, and you look out into the audience and there are people asleep or people on their phones … wow.”
She loved working with her fellow actors, including Cameron Daddo, but the reality of live theatre was confronting at a time when she was already stretched thin.
“I conquered that fear,” she says. But that took a toll.
Rebecca Gibney’s autism and ADHD diagnosis
“I’m a glass half-full person and I do feel incredibly grateful for everything that I’ve got,” says Rebecca. “The downside of that is I’m not very good at saying no. I can sometimes work myself into the ground.”
Those old, familiar feelings of panic and worthlessness began to creep up on her, like a heavy weight dragging her down.
“After Dancing With The Stars I had some major struggles, so I went back and saw a psychologist,” she says.
Rebecca underwent a rigorous assessment. Her doctor came back with a diagnosis: she has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
“It’s been hard. It’s been very emotional,” Rebecca says. “I’ve cried a lot more in the last few months than I’ve cried in a long time, which I thought I’d gotten over as a woman over 60. I was like, ‘No, I’ve got all that stuff sorted’.
“I’m still coming to terms with it because it’s answered a lot of questions from my past – my panic attacks, my years of masking, which started obviously at a very early age.”
What is masking?
‘Masking’ happens when an autistic person suppresses or hides their traits and needs in order to fit in with society. According to Autism Awareness Australia, they strive to appear as if they have no difficulties, despite internal obstacles. Masking can cause chronic stress, anxiety, burnout and a loss of self-worth.
It can also delay diagnosis.
Being an actor, Rebecca says that masking came naturally to her.
“To an extent, it’s the job I’ve got,” she explains. “You put on a happy face and go, ‘No no, it’s fine.’ Inside you’re saying, ‘Urgh’ and recoiling. Even though I seemed to be outgoing as a young kid, I actually preferred being in the bush and hiding myself away.
“I would put myself in situations that I didn’t actually want to be in. I don’t really like crowds, I don’t like crowd noise. I don’t like being out in public to a certain extent.”
The emotional toll of masking
Rebecca was chronically shy as a child. Her upbringing was troubled. She left school at 15, and Mamma Shirl sent her to deportment school.
“That was probably when the masking started. I thought, ‘Oh, if I put make-up on and become more girly, I can pretend to be this person that I’m not really, and I guess that’s what’s expected.’”
Her career took off, but in her 30s, intrusive thoughts took hold again.
“I was spiralling. The weekly panic attacks became daily then hourly. The self-loathing was constant and my pain was so deep I didn’t know how to deal with it,” Rebecca wrote of that time in her online confession.
Finding the strength to ask for help saved her. Last year, when the darkness returned, she knew what to do. Her diagnosis and treatment have brought clarity and calm.
“All the drop-down tabs have gone away,” she says. She describes moments of thinking, ‘Oh my God, so this is what it must be like to have a normal brain!’ It was a revelation.
“I’ve lived for so long with my brain never stopping. I just assumed that was what it was like for most people.”
However, this freedom has also opened up a feeling of grief for all the lost time.
Reckoning with her autism and ADHD
“There’s that slight mourning – gosh, if I’d known this 40, 50 years ago, would I have gone through all the stuff that I went through? Maybe it would have made my high school years easier because, you know, I did have a lot of mental health struggles.”
Rebecca pauses and adds thoughtfully, “It is a sense of grief.”
The actress’ busy life and career have meant putting off facing a lot of the emotions stirred up by her diagnosis. “But it is starting to come up for me now,” she says, “because I’m so tired that I feel like there’s this little girl inside me going, ‘Hang on, stop, when is it my turn?’
“I keep saying, ‘Soon. Let me just get through this next little while.’ I am going to go back to therapy and talking it through and talking about how I feel about it. It’s been an interesting 61 years, and I think there is still a little bit of grief there that needs to come out.”
Living with a neurodivergent brain
For much of Rebecca’s life, the highs and happiness have sat alongside her demons.
Her diagnosis collided with a new direction in her career when she agreed to host Millionaire Hot Seat. Her gentle touch makes her a surprising but canny choice to host a quiz show where contestants are just a few questions away from life-changing amounts of money. She did not, however, anticipate how taxing it would be.
Rebecca says the great thing about having the support of a psychologist and a psychiatrist, as well as a diagnosis, is that it has helped her to see her neurodivergent brain as something of a superpower.
“I can hyper-focus on things,” she says. “That is possibly why I have the career that I have – because I work incredibly hard.”
Initially, Rebecca admits, she said no to Hot Seat. Then she adds, laughing: “Jo Porter. It’s all her fault.”
Saying “yes” to Millionaire Hot Seat
Jo Porter has produced and executive produced some of Australia’s best-known and most loved television shows, including Picnic At Hanging Rock, Wentworth and The Artful Dodger. She is the person who phoned Rebecca many years ago with a propitious acting job that would change her life.
“I’d moved to Tasmania and thought, ‘I’m going to have a nice life’,” Rebecca says. Her son, Zac, was two, and her plan was to raise him while doing “the odd job now and then”.
“Jo called me and said, ‘I’ve got this really good script for you to read. It’s called Packed to the Rafters.’”
In the years since, the two have become good friends. Last year, Jo called again and said, “Have you ever thought about a game show?”
Rebecca laughs. “I went, ‘What? No. Thank you for thinking of me, but no.’”
Jo didn’t give up. She called again and asked Rebecca to come and have a look at the set.
Rebecca rang Mamma Shirl and asked what she thought. Shirl was all for it. “She said, ‘Oh yes, darling. Why not? You’re going to be good at this. You’re sitting across from the people who have been your fans and supporters and everyday Australians, and they’re the ones who have put you where you are, so this is your opportunity to give back to them.’”
Rebecca chuckles. “Of course my mum would say something like that!”
How Rebecca Gibney’s autism diagnosis changed her outlook
Because she was in her year of saying yes, she took the plunge. “That was my ADHD brain going, ‘Oh yeah, yeah, I’ll do that.’ I don’t think about the ramifications. So, I came over and did the test and went, ‘I can do that.’”
Anyone who owns a television knows the Millionaire Hot Seat set: Arena-style seating that leaves no escape for the people on stage. Lights. Noise. Pressure.
“The first day, I walked onto the set, and the lights did that thing they do when the music goes, ‘Bdl-bd-bd-da-ble’. I actually had a physical reaction to it,” remembers Rebecca. “I went, ‘Oh my God, what have I done? I’ve put myself in the exact environment that I just found out I don’t want to be in. This is crazy.’
“It’s very exposing. I’m so used to hiding behind characters.”
“The only time that you ever really see me is when I do interviews like this. Even then, it’s for short periods.”
Rebecca regrouped. She had 60 years of practice soothing herself through confronting scenarios, plus her lifelong ace in the hole: Mamma Shirl. “Mum said, ‘Everything in your life has led you to this point. You’re going to be good at this.’”
Mamma Shirl was right.
A new kind of quiz show host
Quiz shows follow a formula. Contestants tell their story. The audience gets to know the player and the stakes. Rebecca, who is chatty and tender-hearted, found that she loved having the opportunity to talk with contestants, to hear their stories, and to help them relax and enjoy themselves.
“That side of it is fantastic,” she says. “You meet people from all walks of life.”
On an average day, she guides 26 contestants through the process. Millionaire Hot Seat is scripted, but once the cameras start rolling, it’s Rebecca’s job to keep the conversation going through the game. It was “a massive learning curve” and a lot of pressure, and she underestimated how emotionally challenging it would be.
“I completely invest in the journeys of the contestants and I really want them to win,” she admits. “My heart’s pounding, the adrenaline’s coursing. I’m the first to know when they’ve won or they’ve lost. When they do lose, and they’ve invested so much, it’s devastating! I’ve had more than a few occasions where I’ve gone into my dressing room and just cried because I know how much the money would have meant to certain people.
“All I want to do is say, ‘You need this money – here, take it.’ And I can’t.”
Embracing her autism and ADHD
The secret to success, Rebecca discovered, was to be herself.
When she first started recording, she was playing the part of a quiz- show host. Professional. Serious. Poker-faced. “Then, at some point, it clicked and I went. ‘You know what? I’m going to be a bit sillier. I’m going to start being a bit me. If I get emotional, I’m going to let that happen.’”
She found that, when she allowed herself to express what she was feeling alongside the contestants – the anticipation, the fear, the jubilation, the disappointment – she thrived.
“It is a privilege to be working on a show that gives away life-changing amounts of money,” says Rebecca. “We had someone who won something the other day. He was funny, a bit of a battler, and he said, ‘I’m just here for a laugh.’ He ended up walking away with quite a bit of money. At the end his wife came down, and they were both totally in shock and couldn’t quite believe it. I hugged him and his eyes filled with tears and – this is going to make me cry again – he said, ‘Things like this don’t happen to me.’ I went, ‘They do now.’
“It’s moments like that. It’s been exhilarating and extraordinary and it is a privilege. I’ve had moments that I would never have had on any other show, because it is unique. I’m incredibly grateful for it.”
Why Rebecca Gibney is choosing kindness
Rebecca loves working on Hot Seat, but in 2026 she’s going to be more conscientious about putting herself and her family first.
“I’m going to be a bit more aware of making sure I check in with myself before I say yes to anything,” she tells The Weekly. “It’s about being kind; passionately telling stories, but making sure you’re as kind as you can be to as many people as you can.
“That’s another thing that Mum has always taught me.”
If this story has raised issues for you, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.
This article first appeared in the April 2026 issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly. Subscribe so you never miss an issue.
Styling Assistant: Lilly Veitch. Hair: Brad Mullins. Make-up: Julia Green. MCB backdrops. Shot at Ad Finem studios.
