{"id":625104,"date":"2026-04-23T05:51:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T05:51:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/625104\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T05:51:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T05:51:18","slug":"lisa-wilkinson-reveals-whether-she-will-return-to-today-co-host-seat-after-pregnant-sarah-abo-offered-her-maternity-fill-in-role-alongside-karl-stefanovic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/625104\/","title":{"rendered":"Lisa Wilkinson reveals whether she will return to Today co-host seat – after pregnant Sarah Abo offered her maternity fill-in role alongside Karl Stefanovic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lisa Wilkinson has responded to suggestions she could return to the Today desk as a fill-in co-host eight years after her acrimonious departure from the breakfast show.<\/p>\n

Before an appearance on the show she hosted for a decade earlier this month, current co-host Sarah Abo joked on social media that Wilkinson, 66, should be her replacement for her upcoming maternity leave.<\/p>\n

“Ooh this will be fun!! Cannot wait!! Have you cleared your calendar for August..? \u00a0xx,” she wrote on an Instagram post promoting Wilkinson’s April 15 appearance.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wilkinson responded: “Funny you should say that Sarah\u2026I\u2019m remarkably free these days! xxx.”<\/p>\n

\"Bruce<\/p>\n

However, the mother-of-three seemed to cool on the idea during an interview with Woman’s Day this week.<\/p>\n

When asked if she had any plans to return to TV, Lisa replied, “Right now it\u2019s all about [my new book The Titanic Story of] Evelyn. I\u2019m travelling the country giving talks on the book, which is a joy.<\/p>\n

“There has also been some interest in taking Evelyn\u2019s story to the screen, so we\u2019ll see.”<\/p>\n

Wilkinson’s exit from the Nine Network in 2017 was widely seen as strained, following a contract dispute and tensions over pay disparity with co-host Karl, as later detailed in her 2021 memoir It Wasn’t Meant to Be Like This.<\/p>\n

After leaving Today,\u00a0Wilkinson went on to anchor Channel 10’s The Project<\/a>\u00a0before becoming embroiled in a high-profile defamation case brought by Lehrmann.<\/p>\n

Addressing the recent legal developments, Stefanovic this month asked how she had been navigating her time away from the spotlight.<\/p>\n

“How have you been? How have you been navigating that period of a break for yourself?” he said.<\/p>\n

“Well, we got a great outcome last week, the appeal was thrown out, I’m talking about Bruce Lehrmann’s appeal, and it was thrown out. So the outcome I think everyone wanted has now been achieved,” Wilkinson replied.<\/p>\n

“And I didn’t know that it was going to happen on Thursday. So I feel like that happening on Thursday and the book coming out today feels like a really perfect alignment.”<\/p>\n

Her comments refer to the dismissal of Lehrmann’s appeal in the Federal Court proceedings related to his defamation case against Network Ten and Wilkinson.<\/p>\n

Stefanovic kept the mood light, joking about whether he made it into her latest book.<\/p>\n

“No I left you out of this one, you’ll be pleased to hear,” Wilkinson said.<\/p>\n

“That whole period for me- I mean, we’ve obviously had our ups and downs but we had a lot of ups. And it was a very special period too,” he added.<\/p>\n

The Today show’s Instagram account shared a clip of Karl and Lisa embracing before going on air, alongside the caption: “Nothing but love for @lisawilkinson.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lisa Wilkinson has responded to suggestions she could return to the Today desk as a fill-in co-host eight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":625105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,12304,55416,45809,427],"class_list":{"0":"post-625104","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-karl-stefanovic","12":"tag-lisa-wilkinson","13":"tag-today-show","14":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}