Kyle Sandilands has claimed he received death threats after his departure from The Kyle and Jackie O show earlier this year.
In a YouTube interview with former Today presenter, Karl Stefanovic, Sandilands said he was warned not to return to broadcasting.
“There was death threats, letters in my office explaining, ‘If you ever do anything on any platform, we’ll kill you, we’ll hunt you down’,” Sandilands said.
“I know these people are lunatics, but what if just one of those lunatics has a weapon? Do you ever think about that?”
He pointed to the fatal shooting of a US health insurance chief executive in New York in 2024 as an example of what he described as growing hostility towards public figures.
“What is the assassination culture? All these loons feel empowered that they can go and take out a CEO of a healthcare company in America on the streets of New York,” he said.
“We’ve all got extreme mates … we’re probably our mates’ extreme mates. But we need to be based in some sort of correct assumption of what life’s all about, we can’t be having all these extremes.”
Much of the interview focused on the fallout from the on-air dispute that brought an end to the KIIS FM show he co-hosted with Jackie O Henderson in February.
Sandilands said he was still trying to understand how events unfolded.
“I was one year into the 10-year plan, and then, due to someone’s bad mood, that fell apart,” he said.
He also said he would not speak with his former co-host until her Federal Court proceedings against ARN Media had concluded.
Reflecting on his dismissal, Sandilands said the experience had not affected him in the way many people expected.
“People would think, ‘He’s crushed’. There are people rejoicing and stamping all over the death and the ashes of both of us. But let them. They’ve got very little joy in their heart, those trolls,” he said.
He added that the situation had been hardest on staff who lost their jobs, including his manager.
Henderson filed legal action against her former employer, alleging the company failed to act on bullying and psychosocial safety complaints she claimed to have raised about Sandilands’ conduct.
Sandilands denied he was a workplace bully.
“Women resigned from the radio station to come and work for me,” he said.
“That’s remarkable for such a horrific bully in the workplace.”
Sandilands also criticised the legal process surrounding his dismissal, saying it had left him frustrated despite spending significant amounts on legal advice.
“I’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars with lawyers … only for someone to say, ‘It was gross misconduct, you’re fired’,” he said.
“This legal system … it’s not fair. Whether I can pay for it or not, it’s designed to squash the little person down and in this case, I was a little person.”
Since leaving commercial radio, Sandilands has launched his subscription-based podcast platform, KS Live, while Stefanovic has also moved into independent podcasting following his departure from Nine.
During the interview, Sandilands proposed the idea of working together with Sandilands to form a new corporation.
“There’s nothing stopping that,” Sandilands said.
Image: YouTube/ The Karl Stefanovic Show
