Jackie O has exposed Karl Stefanovic’s sneaky but highly effective “trick” that he uses in interviews. During an interview with Stefanovic for a 60 Minutes story in early May, the pair sat down to discuss Jackie's work and family life.
The KIIS FM host admitted she didn’t want to cry on camera but knew “the one thing” that would bring her to tears would be any discussion of her daughter, Kitty.
“I just thought, ‘OK, prepare yourself, because the minute her name gets mentioned you’re going to get teary’”, she said on air.
“He asked me about her … He said, ‘you’ve got such a beautiful child,’ and it looked like Karl was crying. His eyes were welling up.”
Jackie said that she burst into tears the moment she saw Stefanovic getting emotional.
“When you see someone else’s eyes well up with tears and they’re talking about something really deeply personal to you, that was it, all I had to do was look into his weeping eyes and I started crying,” she said.
But as soon as the interview ended, Jackie began to suspect that Stefanovic was faking his tears to make her emotional.
“I thought, ‘Oh, I think he did that deliberately, actually. That might be his trick, which is a great trick. Oh my god, I feel so foolish now.’
Jackie continued: “I’m thinking, ‘why would Karl have tears in his eyes over my daughter that he only met five minutes ago?’”
Kyle revealed that Stefanovic tried to pull the same stunt with him during his own interview.
“This is what he does,” Kyle said on air at the time. “He tried to do that to me too.
“He goes, ‘So, it must have been tough finding yourself homeless at 16,’ and his eyes started welling up. And I thought, ‘This bastard can cry on demand!’”
Kyle said his sit-down chat with Stefanovic went for hours and added: “I knew he was just trying to make me cry. So many hours and hours of questioning and I said, ‘just tell me the question you really want to ask for god’s sake.”
This article originally appeared on Over60.