Spotlight On: TV presenter Angela Scanlon

TV presenter, podcaster, brand owner, fashionista, and mother-of-two; Angela Scanlon has many strings in her bow.

The Meath native is the latest cover star for our Goss.ie Spotlight On feature, and in this interview she candidly opens up about dealing with online trolling, and her struggles with mental health.

The TV star also reveals why she hides her children’s faces on social media, and whether she would ever take over as host of Love Island.

Angela worked as a stylist and journalist before bringing her talent to the small screen with RTÉ’s Xposé and Off the Rails.

Now residing in London with her husband Roy Hogan and their two daughters, Angela has found success both at home and abroad.

In 2014, the presenter’s first major documentary Oi Ginger! was broadcast, and was subsequently followed up by her series Angela Scanlon: Full Frontal, which saw her address “taboo” topics.

In 2016, Angela landed a presenting role on BBC’s The One Show, providing maternity cover for Alex Jones. 

Between 2018 and 2021, Angela also hosted her own Sunday morning show on BBC Radio 2.

On top of her TV work, Angela hosts her own successful podcast ‘Thanks A Million’, which boasts high-profile guests including Stacey Dooley, Nicola Coughlan, Jo Brand and Fearne Cotton.

The 38-year-old also launched her RTÉ chat show Ask Me Anything last year, with the highly anticipated second season of the series set to return on Saturday, October 15.

Though she can’t reveal any of the upcoming guests, there’s no doubt the line-up will be star-studded – as previous celebrities who have appeared on the show include Chris O’Dowd, Amy Huberman, Vogue Williams and Gemma Collins.

Check out our exclusive chat with Angela below:

Your RTÉ chat show Ask Me Anything is finally returning to our screens. What can viewers expect from the second series?

It’s going to be bigger and better than ever before! We’re definitely going to have a bigger audience, which I can’t wait for because we had to have a restricted audience because of Covid-19.

Definitely bigger audience and then, really, it’s just more of the same. So, brilliant and hopefully unexpected guests…

Can you reveal any of the guests for this season?

I can’t! I’m so sorry… I know how boring that is. My brain is like ‘Don’t tell anyone!’

Who is your dream guest to appear on the show? 

Dream guest… Stanley Tucci! I’m just obsessed with him. I love his Sicily docuseries, because he’s obviously of Italian origin and he goes around basically to glorious cities in Italy, eating food and it’s divine! He’d be up there.

I mean I’d quite like to interview Will Smith. I’d just like to know what the hell he was thinking [about the Oscars slap]. I’d quite enjoy a little rifle around that situation.

Oprah Winfrey always. I suspect she wouldn’t be loving it. Meghan Markle, oh go on throw her in there. Meghan Markle would be a great one!

You’ve had five successful series of your podcast Thanks A Million. Is there a sixth series in the pipeline? 

There is! We recorded the first episode on September 21 of series six, so it’s all go in Casa Scanlon. Yeah, six series – I can’t quite believe it’s six series. We’ve got a good line-up this year.

I mean, I sometimes think that I want to go back to the beginning and listen to them all again, because there’s people that I interviewed and I know that I could learn lots of things from them and I forgot.

Aisling Bea was one of my favourite guests, Joe Lycett, Jo Brand, Vicky Pattison, Katherine Ryan, Fearne Cotton as well. I just love it. It’s such a really selfish place for me to pick the brains of some brilliant humans.

Do you like getting into the nitty-gritty of topics? 

I don’t think there’s much point in discussing all the known stuff. I think that’s what’s brilliant about podcasts – that you can get a bit down and dirty. People kind of forget when they’re on long-form podcasts, you have a very open chat I think. So yeah, that’s really important to me.

But equally, on the chat show I like to do that, like get something out of people that you didn’t know before – sometimes that’s deep or sometimes that’s something a bit more silly or unexpected, but I think that’s important for me.

I did a show on RTÉ years ago called Close Encounters, and still something people talk about to me is Katie Hopkins. When I interviewed her – everyone hated her, but then afterwards, everyone was like ‘Oh, God.’

For me, there’s an interest in finding the human side of somebody who’s supposedly a monster, or finding something dark in someone that’s supposedly sweet as honey.

You welcomed your second child earlier this year, congratulations! What has life been like as a mother-of-two?

Busy… more washing. I feel I have to be more organised, which is not my natural state. I’m trying to train Ruby to get her clothes ready for school the night before. So yeah, just trying to be organised.

I’ve never been one for meal prep, I’m not going to lie. I find it so boring but I’m having to freeze ice cubes of puree so that I don’t lose my mind, or she doesn’t lose her s**t more like. But, I guess maybe this time round it’s the lack of sleep, or just the manic-ness I’m certainly more awareness that there’s an end to it I suppose.

That early stage where you’re yawning all the time doesn’t last forever and sometimes when you’re in the middle of that and you’ve never come through it – it’s quite hard to believe that you can come out the other side of it. But I have!

Do you find it hard to delegate the responsibilities with Roy? 

He is super hands on, thank God! That was a very up front conversation from the beginning. He’s very, very hands on. I think it’s a communication thing – it’s constant.

There are times when we are wildly frustrated with each other, and ourselves and everything. But it’s just communicating and I’ve really had to learn that because I didn’t know how.

I was just expecting people to read my mind and getting annoyed when it didn’t happen. So, it’s definitely been learning for me.

Have you and Roy plans to expand your family? 

Give me a break! She’s literally seven months old. So right now… no!

 

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Would you ever consider moving back to Ireland full-time, would you prefer to raise the kids here? 

You know what, Ruby’s started school here which is quite a big milestone. She’s in now. So, I think we’re here for the foreseeable.

We spend so much time in Ireland, we have the best of both worlds.

You’ve made quite a conscious decision to keep your kids offline. Why have you made that decision, and is that something you think you’ll ever change your mind on? 

Look, I think it’s a totally personal decision. I have lots of friends and lots of peers who happily show their kids, and I love seeing them. I actually think mine are pretty cute, so I’d like to show their faces, but I think it’s not really my decision to make is the truth of it.

So myself and Roy had a conversation before we had Ruby which was years ago and if she wants to at a certain point do that, then fine. But I just think social media is a tricky one. We’re not really sure how it works. I think it’s not my choice, truthfully.

So we’ve kept them off and whether I will change my mind, I don’t know but I think not. I mean the odd time I have posted by mistake a picture of her where the crop has gone wrong or something, and I get this wild lurch of fear and I think that confirms that for us it’s the right thing to do right now.

I made the decision, not actively, I think it happens gradually when you’re in the public eye. I’ve accepted that part of the gig for me, but she hasn’t. I feel that is a sacred part of my life, which I feel quite strongly about, so I do want to protect that.

 

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Speaking of social media – have you experienced trolling online and if so, how do you deal with that? 

I try not read it. It’s a bit like Tripadvisor – you go on to give out about a restaurant, not say it’s fabulous, often. But it’s really hard to stay in touch with that reality when people are flinging stuff at you. I think you have to be really disciplined not to read comments.

I try to not go on it. In earlier years, I would feel bad if somebody criticised a dress that I wore, or the freckles on my legs or some s**t that’s not really important in life or in the grand scheme of things. So now I just don’t really engage with people – good or bad.

If somebody wants to send me a direct message – great, I’ll try my best to engage with it. But I just like to block and mute and I think it’s important to remember that you’re allowed to do that.

I did go through a period of retweeting s**t people said about me – and I did quite enjoy that because sometimes they forget that there’s a human behind that profile picture and they go ‘Oh my God! I didn’t really mean that actually, I really like your dress!’, so they tend to back down.

But then you’re just getting into a scrap with someone that you don’t really have time or interest in. So I just try to not scrap, but if they get me on the wrong day, I can not be held responsible!

A lot of what you’ve said there feeds into mental health struggles – something you’ve been very open about. What pushed you to talk about your mental health struggles? Did you find it therapeutic or difficult? 

Yeah, both of those. I thought it was important to do it. From an honesty point of view, it’s easy to look at people in the public eye and think they’re shiny and lucky and happy, and I think the reality is often very different.

For me, I’m not very good at lying – my face doesn’t lie very well and my mouth doesn’t lie very well, so yeah I was just honest and I think it is very important to just be honest.

There’s a time and place. You don’t have to share every bit of you, but for me, there were certain things I’d experienced that had I known, or related to somebody publicly, or personally who had experienced similar things or come through them and appeared thriving – that would’ve felt very comforting to me.

I didn’t have that, so I felt like I might be able to provide that for somebody who might be in a worse place than I was.

Do you think as well that will serve your kids in later life, when they come across those struggles themselves. 

Totally, I think there’s got to be an openness. It’s not hiding. I think a lot of us hide those things because we’re ashamed or we’re afraid that if we say them out loud that they become the definition and the only thing people think about us.

Actually I think we’re all complicated humans and I think it’s important to acknowledge all of those bits and not just assume that people are these two dimensional versions of themselves.

Talking about them means that you can drop some of the shame and for me, that’s the most toxic thing – the sense of shame that you’re carrying around and you’re hiding bits of yourself that you’re somehow broken or not normal, when actually we all have these bits.

Laura Whitmore recently stepped down as host of Love Island and we would love to see another Irish presenter fill in for her. If you were asked to host the show, would you do it? 

I mean I don’t think I’d be the best person for that gig is the truth of it. I have no interest in hosting Love Island – I don’t watch the show and never have.

It’s obviously a delicious gig for many reasons but it’s not for me. I know that Maura Higgins has been talked about – I think she’d be great!

I mean I think James Kavanagh would be great if you want an Irish presenter in there, but I don’t think it’s for me.

Aside from your TV work, you’re very well-known for your great fashion sense. Would you ever consider launching your own clothing brand? 

Ooh, I don’t know – never say never. I have a jewellery brand which has been keeping me busy and I pull a lot of that side of things into it.

I love frkl, I love what we’re doing and what we’re building. I think that’s good for me now – but who knows.

You’ve achieved so much over the years, is there anything on your bucket list you’d still like to achieve, either personally or professionally?

Oh my God… loads and loads! Honestly right now, I’m trying to actually enjoy the things I’m doing at the moment. I’ve spent a lot of time as a woman onto the next thing, a woman onto the next thing before I’d even started doing the thing that was in front of me.

My job, personally, I literally have to stop myself from running ahead and try to enjoy the things that are in front of me. I’m up the walls is the truth of it, between podcast and frkl and new show and old show, I have a lot on my plate.

There’s definitely things that I want to do, but it’s balance – which by the way, I’m absolutely rubbish at.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

Oh God I hate a five year plan! Look, who knows. I think sometimes we get fixated on this certain picture and we end up not seeing brilliant, unexpected opportunities that present themselves because we’re so focused on the thing that we think we should be doing.

I’m just a bit loosey goosey about that, I’m happy as long as I feel content in work and slightly terrified – then I know I’m in the right direction and that’s how I try to operate.

Angela Scanlon’s Ask Me Anything returns to RTÉ One on Saturday, October 15.