Days before The Hollywood Reporter Australia launched itself as “the trusted voice of Australia’s entertainment industry,” the trusted voice published an all-caps EXCLUSIVE: Patrick Brammall would host the Logies. A few hours later, every other outlet confirmed the gig had gone to wildlife warrior-turned-TV heartthrob Robert Irwin, and the post quietly vanished.
Neither man was in attendance at Thursday night’s launch party.
“We actually received two industry sources that told us that information,” publisher Paris Raine sighed to me about the blunder, eye-roll included. “Which, typically, that’s enough for us to produce something. But it’s unfortunate circumstances — the two sources gave misleading information. So, we corrected it, we removed it. And … moving forward!”
Every outlet makes the occasional mistake. They just don’t usually do it in the days before launching a masthead whose entire pitch is authority. Consider it an accidental preview of the night ahead.
For the uninitiated: THR Australia is the latest entry in our grand local tradition of licensing a famous American masthead and hoping the prestige survives the Qantas flight over.
Raine is a 26-year-old Sydney model and influencer — 300,000 Instagram followers, a feed full of red carpet poses at movie screenings — and, now, a fledgling publisher. The Hollywood Reporter is her first publication.
She’ll tell you romantically how this glamorous-sounding venture came to be.
“I was sitting quietly to myself,” she told Thursday’s crowd, “and that’s when the idea arrived. I heard: The Hollywood Reporter … Australia. And I didn’t know what that meant. And it definitely felt so much bigger than me.”
Raine had considered licensing Deadline — another US-based trade media outlet focusing on entertainment — but held back.
“Nothing gave me the same spark. I go off a feeling.”
Her editor-in-chief is Sean Sennett, previously of Time Off, a free street-press magazine in Brisbane. They met at a movie premiere about a year ago, sat next to each other, and she shared the vision. He describes the staff of six as “a very lean, mean beast” and called Raine “an amazing visionary who manifested the f**k out of this”.
Thursday’s launch at Town Hall — one of Sydney’s most iconic rooms — certainly looked like a THING. There was a banner at the entrance: THE TRUSTED VOICE OF AUSTRALIA’S ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY. And there was a fairy-princess ball gown, worn by Raine.
Moments before Australia’s newest media maven took to the microphone to address the guests, I spotted her backstage doing guided breathing exercises combined with air squats.
Despite all the gushing about championing Australia’s arts scene and spotlighting local talent, it all seemed less Vanity Fair and more vanity project.
The canapés included a bread buffet (carbs? So not Hollywood), and the night’s true cover star was Raine herself, floating around the room, pausing for photos.
Conspicuously missing? Australia’s entertainment industry.
Because across town, on the very same night, the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) was throwing a televised 40th-anniversary Hall of Fame celebration for music icons like Kate Ceberano and Gurrumul, with actors like Claudia Karvan, Sam Neill and Eddie Perfect in the room.
When I asked Sennett why the launch was scheduled head-to-head with the biggest industry event of the week, he raced to brush it off: “That’s a whole different world. It’s a whole different universe. I mean, if it was held on a different night, I’m sure a lot of those people would be here.”
“My gosh. What a room we have here!” Raine told the crowd, marvelling at the guests surrounding her.
The starriest names at THR’s bash: Dean Wells — the Married At First Sight villain, class of 2018 — and his fiancée Aimee Woolley, a Beauty and the Geek alumna.
Wells, asked to describe Raine, offered: “She’s a model and sort of … socialite, kind of … I dunno. I just met her at a bunch of events.”
Content creator Isaias Vego, 29, was queuing to take a photo in front of the media wall. He wants to break into marketing and has been relentlessly going for a bunch of job interviews (“but they’ve been telling me, ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you’. Apparently, I need a degree even though I’m good”).
Of the magazine, he said: “Apparently it’s big in America. I don’t know.”
He seemed more familiar with Raine than the publication she’s hoping to turn into a cultural force.
“She’s an influencer. I know her from parties,” he said.
Raine’s IMDb bio describes her as an actress “with flexibility for international projects” who has “performed in an array of noteworthy productions”. Her StarNow profile fills in the detail: stand-in extra on Married At First Sight, 2020; featured extra on Married At First Sight, 2021; extra on Home and Away. She was also, in 2015, a state winner and national finalist in the Miss NSW Teen Galaxy pageant. Her latest role now is cosplaying as a 2000s magazine editrix.
When the velvet curtain dropped to unveil the debut cover star (actress Phoebe Tonkin, with a special edition featuring Heartbreak High actor Josh Heuston to follow) the room cheered, then murmured.
Paris declared that within the past week they’d doubled their print run because Coles and Woolworths had agreed to stock the magazine in supermarkets nationwide. One obvious question lingered: Are mums in the cereal aisle paying 15 bucks for a trade mag featuring a guy from a teen Netflix show on the cover?
One media identity said they swung by the party to figure out what exactly this whole thing was attempting to achieve.
“I … think … it’s great … they’re … supporting the industry?” they winced, before mouthing they couldn’t speak truthfully.
The Hollywood Reporter is famous for its Oscar-season roundtables with nominated actors. Raine wants to do the same locally. The trouble is Nicole, Cate and Margot don’t need the knock-off version when they already do the real thing with the actual edition of The Hollywood Reporter. Y’know … the one in Hollywood.
It’s hard not to imagine the Aussie roundtable line-up: Delta Goodrem, Jessica Mauboy and Natalie Bassingthwaighte. Nothing wrong with that. Just perhaps not the cultural gravitas the banner at the door promises.
As the team handed out the inaugural issue — a first look before it hits newsstands on June 22 at $14.99 — I grabbed a copy, jumped in a taxi, and started thumbing through.
Within 10 seconds, a typo glared out from the page. (Well, several typos. But I’m trying to be generous.)
Pick up a copy at Coles and see if you can find them all.
james.weir@news.com.au
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