Today host Deb Knight addresses Georgie Gardner feud rumours: "We're not schoolgirls"
Deborah Knight has put rumours to rest claiming that she fails to get along with her Today co-host Georgie Gardner.
Since the two made their side-by-side hosting debut at the beginning of the year, rumours have been rife saying that the journalists were battling it out for the top spot on the Channel 9 breakfast show, but speaking to Stellar magazine, Knight said that wasn’t the case.
“We’re not schoolgirls in a schoolyard,” said Knight.
“We’re professional people, and it shouldn’t matter that we’re two women. It disappoints me that has to be the focus.
“Georgie and I have enormous respect for each other. We’re very different people, but I think that’s a good thing because we bring different approaches.”
Also speaking to Stellar was Gardner, who shared the same sentiments saying: “If people feel that because it’s two women that we couldn’t possibly get on and we need to be pitted against each other, then that’s a sad indictment of where we are at as a society.”
Gardner was the one who put Knight’s name forward when her former co-host Karl Stefanovic was sacked from the show.
But ever since the all-female show aired in January, it has been on the receiving end of enormous criticism.
“A lot of it (the commentary) was just hateful, and you have to ignore it,” Knight told Stellar.
“The first day we were on air, we hadn’t even completed the first show and articles were appearing online writing us off and saying, ‘This is a dud’. It was silly and unfair. I realised I couldn’t control any of this, but what I could control was doing the best job I can.”