Todd Woodbridge has spoken publicly for the first time about being the focus of colleague Jelena Dokic’s extremely emotional Logies acceptance speech.
The 54-year-old sports commentator and Tipping Point Australia host joined Nova FM’s Jase and Lauren on Friday, where he was asked about the emotional tribute during TV’s “Night of Nights”.
Dokic, 42, won Best Factual or Documentary Program for her documentary Unbreakable: The Jelena Dokic Story, and used her speech to thank Woodbridge for encouraging her to pursue a career in media after retiring- even calling him her “person”.
“I want to go back to the Logies on Sunday night, because I got very emotional when Jelena Dokic won her Logie and she made this incredible speech about how if every woman and wife and daughter and sister had a Todd in her life, the world would be a better place,” host Lauren Phillips said during a visit to The Tipping Point set.
“I mean, Paul, my fiancé and I were on the couch sobbing watching that. How did you feel in that moment?”
Woodbridge admitted the speech took him by surprise.
“Yeah, I was surprised by her doing that,” he said.
“I know she (Jelena) sometimes says that in a keynote a little bit, but I’ve never seen the keynote and been there, but her whole speech was flawless.”
The multiple Grand Slam-winning doubles champ said the moment was made even more special because the messaging “was so strong”.
“And to be a big part of that messaging and understanding of getting her on track, really, I felt incredibly proud to have watched someone be able to get up and deliver, in front of that audience at a Logies when you got all these TV people, that’s nerve wracking,” he said.
“But she just killed it.”
Phillips also recalled Woodbridge’s kindness towards both Dokic and herself during her former role as a Nine sports reporter.
“I remember, in those early days of Channel Nine taking over the Australian Open and I worked on those first seasons… you were so nurturing to her, but not just to her, to all of us,” she said.
“You have this innate ability to make people feel so comfortable and so welcome, and you’ve just got this beautiful aura about you. So I’m so glad that that moment was shared so publicly, because a lot of us feel that way.”
Woodbridge thanked her, saying he “enjoys the company of it all” and wants “everyone to do well”.
“I want to do the very best job. I’m quite competitive, but I can’t do it if the other people don’t do it well. So you’re together in that,” he said.
The tennis great said the evening was even more surreal after he later won his own Logie- the Bert Newton Award for Most Popular Presenter- for Tipping Point.
“But that whole thing with what Jelena was able to deliver, and then to have my moment follow that, more or less, that was bizarrely, I just couldn’t believe the whole timing of it all, because none of that’s planned,” he said.
“We didn’t know. She didn’t know she’s going to win. I had very little faith. And so it just became one of the most special evenings I’ve ever been a part of.”
On Thursday, Dokic shared a video of herself and Woodbridge moments after their respective wins.
“We did it !!!! We won the Logies !!! This was just moments after both @woodbridge.todd and I won. So good we were able to capture this moment together. Honoured and proud of us,” she wrote.
In the clip, an elated Dokic asked, “Who won the Logies?” before Woodbridge replied, “We did!”
He then joked: “Your speech goes down as the longest 30 seconds that the Logies have ever had, but it was worth it!”
“Listen,” Dokic laughed back, “for TV what do they say? It’s better that you can talk than not talk!”
That evening, Dokic reposted footage of herself with her new boyfriend, Melbourne-based hospitality operations manager Yane Veselinov, singing and laughing together during a date night at the Royal Botanic Gardens.
She later shared a sweet selfie of the pair, captioned with love hearts.