\u201cImportantly,\u201d Chang went on, \u201chow did you sleep?\u201d <\/p>\n
What happened next was arguably the most important moment of the whole show and maybe of O\u2019Brien\u2019s entire Breakfast tenure because it set the tone, laid down a marker, told the audience exactly who she is and what to expect. <\/p>\n
Tova O’Brien on TVNZ’s Breakfast. Screenshots.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ve probably asked and answered the question \u201cHow did you sleep?\u201d hundreds of times in your life. You know the routine. It\u2019s basic small talk: predictable, throwaway, meaningless. Few people have ever answered, as O\u2019Brien did at 6.01am today: \u201cIt was iterative.\u201d <\/p>\n
I was so shocked I had to go back and watch it again. She had come correct and she had not come to mess around and in case you missed that message, she delivered it again later in the show when she said, during an interview with Helen Clark about the US war on Iran: \u201cIs that a risk analysis? That we don\u2019t want to p*** off the US and the US President too much.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cP*** off\u201d! To the former Prime Minister and former third most powerful person at the UN! It was hard to imagine that one wouldn\u2019t be brought up in the post-match debrief with the producers and assorted TVNZ fat cats. But it was also hard to imagine them pushing too hard. As had been \u201citerative\u201d, it felt like a line in the sand. You want Tova O\u2019Brien? You got Tova O\u2019Brien. <\/p>\n
Tova O’Brien interviewing former NZ Prime Minister Helen Clark on TVNZ’s Breakfast.<\/p>\n
Clark was her second live interview of the morning with a Prime Minister; the first was with the current one, who had turned up with the pre-prepared adlib remark: \u201cWelcome to the first day at your new school!\u201d. Did that p*** her off? Hard to say, but he was the one who got schooled when he made the mistake of saying: \u201cMy job is the CEO,\u201d and she retorted: \u201cYour job is the Prime Minister!\u201d <\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t let him get away with diversionary talking points, repeating questions on issues including road user charges and sending troops to the Middle East until he near-enough answered. When he claimed we were moving quicker than other countries in dealing with the oil crisis, she replied that other countries are also moving faster. <\/p>\n
He was clearly relieved to be lobbed a softball question about e-scooters at the end of the interview, which he bunted to Chang, whom he called \u201cmate\u201d. <\/p>\n
But she was not all hardball questions and not p***ing around. This is a show for people who want the hosts to be their friends on the TV and that is a register she both knows how to do and is good at. <\/p>\n
TVNZ Breakfast host Tova O’Brien.<\/p>\n
She offered many fascinating insights into her life and thinking, including the revelation she had set four different alarms in four different parts of her house to ensure she got to work on time this morning. Why is she sleeping in four different parts of her house? No wonder her sleep is iterative. <\/p>\n
The show ended on what looked like a softball interview with former Wiggle and now solo performer Emma Memma, who had just received an All Blacks jersey with her name on the back and was here promoting some music box thing. The three of them chit-chatted about how wonderful everything had been and Memma gave her prepared spiel on the box, and O\u2019Brien said: \u201cThis is useful for parents who want to keep kids away from screens for a bit longer.\u201d <\/p>\n
It felt like a paid advertorial and was a disappointing end to an invigorating morning. But then, O\u2019Brien pivoted: \u201cWhen do you think kids should get involved in screens?\u201d <\/p>\n
There were fewer than 2 minutes before the show\u2019s end. You could almost hear the sharp intake of breath around the studio and in the offices of the fat cats upstairs. A celebrated children\u2019s entertainer who has built her career by keeping children on screens, comes on TVNZ\u2019s light morning magazine programme and is suddenly held to account and plunged into arguably the issue of our times. <\/p>\n
\u201cOoooooh!\u201d Memma replied, looking nervously at Chang. <\/p>\n
\u201cBig question!\u201d Chang said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s really controversial!\u201d Memma said. <\/p>\n
She squirmed out of the question with a diversionary pivot to the importance of visibility for sign language, and Chang threw her another question about sign language and the tension eased and all that was left was to find a way out. <\/p>\n
Chang thanked viewers for joining them. He told O\u2019Brien she smashed it. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou feeling alright?\u201d he asked her. <\/p>\n
\u201cWoo! Yeah!\u201d she said. \u201cJust gonna crumble into a little pile.\u201d She mimed crumbling. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll do it all again tomorrow,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
She beamed. It had been a wild three-hour ride: enthralling, enlightening and amusing and, most of all, iterative. <\/p>\n
Tova O\u2019Brien and Chris Chang host Breakfast on TVNZ1, weekdays from 6am-9am<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cImportantly,\u201d Chang went on, \u201chow did you sleep?\u201d What happened next was arguably the most important moment of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354462,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[14644,42055,151362,5432,27126,187451,14688,3276,1888,1304,3025,13611,111,43,139,69,96136,148619,90,10521,35299,12633,14625,116401,39163],"class_list":["post-354461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-anticipating","tag-autumn","tag-banter","tag-between","tag-break","tag-breakast","tag-chang","tag-chris","tag-first","tag-morning","tag-most","tag-nation","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-obrien","tag-obriens","tag-on","tag-opening","tag-reviewed","tag-spent","tag-summer","tag-tova","tag-tvnzs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}