‘It was too hard ... The Mum guilt – I couldn’t live with that’

Laura McGoldrick opens up on her sudden departure from The Hits. By

Laura McGoldrick once envisioned a life performing on Broadway and the West End. The broadcaster and Sky Sport presenter is sitting at a solid white table in her stunning East Auckland home. A fully decorated Christmas tree is the centrepiece of the house decked out in festive decorations. It’s like Christmas “threw up” in here, she jokes.

When the conversation veers to vivacious childhood performances of musical theatre to her “poor family” the 34-yearold’s laugh is genuine and infectious.

“I can so vividly remember it. We had special dances,” she admits with a barely-there hint of feigned embarrassment before admitting to Les Misérables “family-offs” as a child with another theatre-loving whanāu.

These days it’s her 6-year-old daughter who is taking centre stage in the living room, belting out the latest theatre hits to a willing audience of Mum.

McGoldrick waited her “whole life” for that role.

When asked about her sudden departure from The Hits drive show in October – which she hosted for almost two years with Brad Watson – she explains she “was really struggling with the mum guilt”.

McGoldrick and her husband – cricket legend Martin Guptill (Guppy to her and the rest of the country) – have two young children, Harley, 6 and Teddy, 2.

With Harley now at school, the evening on-air hours meant this “dance mum” was missing school pick-ups and afternoon dance and gymnastics.

“I’ve waited my whole life for this. I want to be there for all those moments,” she says. “It was too hard ... The Mum guilt – I couldn’t live with that.”

After about a decade in radio, having started with Hauraki’s breakfast show in 2013, McGoldrick isn’t ruling out a return and loves the format “too much to say that would be the end, for sure”.

For now, she’s continuing her presenting role with Sky Sport.

McGoldrick grew up with a player agent mum and a dad who ran Lancaster Park (later Jade Stadium). Sport has always been in her blood. But still, when she took her first role – aged 19 – presenting Sky TV’s The Cricket Show in 2009, people still didn’t buy into the idea that “women could know about sport”.

“You almost had to double down, because you had to prove yourself, prove your knowledge ... It was a real graft.”

And while Sky Sport is a “safe, great place to work” and has been “very good to me”, the reality was that it was tough. But she hopes she’s worked hard enough, and “stuck up for myself enough” that when her daughter grows up, “it’s an easier road than the one I had to walk”.

Earlier this year, she became the first woman to regularly host Sky’s league coverage. But she pauses when asked if she sees herself as a role model. If she is, she hopes it's to change the narrative that once you become a mum, “that’s all you are”.

Being a stay at home mum is an “unbelievable job”, she says, but having kids also doesn’t mean you can’t work and have fun. “When everyone’s like, ‘but you’re a mum now’, I’m like, ‘yeah, but I didn’t die’.”

She flashes a grin, knocking on the table we’re sitting at and insisting she’s still very capable of dancing on it. “This thing is solid as a rock, you watch me.”

She may still “have some moves” and love a glass of wine and a good time, but it’s clear that family is where McGoldrick’s heart lies. She’s been front and centre at some of the biggest sporting moments in recent history, and plenty of those involved watching her own husband’s pivotal career moments.

There was, of course, the 2019 Cricket World Cup final, in which the Black Caps lost heartbreakingly to England after the tied game was decided by a super over. Guptill needed two runs from the final ball for the win. It wasn’t to be.

“It’s like having a piece of your heart outside your body. I can’t do anything, I can’t make it better,” McGoldrick says of watching it play out – on scene as both a wife and a presenter. “You had to kind of bring it back to be a bit more professional, but in those moments I don’t think people mind if you show emotion as well. It’s not a secret that’s my husband.”

As we chat, Guppy is out of the country and McGoldrick recently returned from the Cricket World Cup in India. It’s tough for the couple to balance family and two careers that mean a lot of time away from home, but they make it work – helped by support from extended family and nanny, Katie, who is, “part of the family”.

She jumps up from her seat to pull out a pile of colourful Post-it notes from the kitchen pantry – each containing a handwritten note that went in Harley’s lunchbox during her recent trip abroad. Both parents want to ensure the kids know “they’re loved”.

“We make it work as best we can, but the kids know mummy and daddy are always there,” she says. “It’s a constant juggle, and you don’t always get it right ... I’m not sure that I’ll ever get it right, but it’s all part of the fun.”

“Fun” sums up McGoldrick well. She’s the kind of host that opens the door with a smile and closes it with a hug, chatting and joking as though we’re old friends – despite having just met.

But there’s been heartache in recent years as well. She had “multiple” miscarriages between her “soul sister” Harley and Teddy, her “soulmate”.

The last was in the midst of 2020’s level 4 Covid lockdown, and was a missed miscarriage (the fetus is no longer alive, but the body doesn’t recognise it’s no longer pregnant). Surgery was required, and the country’s restrictions meant she had to go through it alone.

Looking back now she admits, “I’m not sure how I got out of there”.

“It certainly changed the way I look at life. It changed the way I felt about myself

for a period of time,” she says. For the first time since we sat down almost an hour ago, she struggles to find the words she’s looking for. “I felt like I’d let the family down. I felt like I let Harley down because my brothers are so important to me, they’re like my best mates.”

There were emotions, tears and she was, “really scared”.

“[There was] loneliness and isolation, and for me there was an element of shame and a lot of confusion. It became very important to me that I talked about it,” she says, describing the experience as “horrific”.

She didn’t want others to think they were alone in their own experiences.

“I look at Teddy now, and I think it was always him trying to get to me, but for whatever reason, the vessel wasn’t quite right,” she says.

“I’m very, very, very lucky. It’s probably why it’s even more important to me that I spend time at home. I had the reality of, ‘this almost didn’t happen’.”