Moments: Living Under the Spotlight | Jason Donovan & Amanda de Cadenet
episodePreviously titled “Moments: Living Under the Spotlight | Jason Dovan & Amanda de Cadenet” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 18, 2026
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How did Amanda describe the paparazzi and press intrusion that led her to leave the UK?
I think for anybody kind of of later generations watching this or listening to this might be interested to hear what press intrusion was like back when you were famous. Yeah. Because you actually ended up leaving the UK because it was just too much with John. I did. What was it like before you left?
How bad was it? Can you give us some kind of examples? I mean, for a young person at the time I was... I had Atlanta, my daughter, at 19. And I think the combination of a member of Duran Duran being married to, you know, television presenter Amanda Ducatene was just like a match made in tabloid heaven. The combination of us was very intense. And Atlanta was less than a year old. And the media was so brutal about my body post-pregnancy. And there was... The worst photos of me. I mean, you can't imagine that. And headlines, you know, Amanda Deflabonay and just like horrible, horrible body shaming. And I remember I was breastfeeding in the park by where I lived and not like with my boobs out, like discreetly breastfeeding.
What specific examples of body-shaming and breastfeeding photos did Amanda recount?
And I guess paparazzi got photos of those pictures and put them on blast.
And just to say, so people know, you couldn't, you never saw the paparazzi.
No. You wouldn't know that they were taking pictures. No, I had no clue.
Because people would go like, oh, well, they knew. You don't know.
You don't know. They are brilliant at hiding. Really good at it.
And they can take them from...
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was it was bad enough that I was I was telling Ella, my daughter, because I walked past my old house that I used to live in. And I said, that's where I used to live with John in Atlanta. And I said, you know, I left this lovely house in Notting Hill with food in the fridge and laundry in the hamper. And I said to him, I've got to get out of here. I can't take this. And we went on a holiday to LA and I never went back. And so my house had to get packed up and shipped to Los Angeles. And I didn't come back here for 10 years. Yeah, it's such a shame. It's such a shame because there's so many wonderful things about being here and so many old friends and my career, I left my career. Like I really just like got up and left.
And it's only kind of through all the work that I've done, all the different therapies that I've done, you know, that I've been able to kind of heal a lot of that pain from that period of time when I used to live here, you know.
How much did having Atlanta help you... It feels like you withstood horrific amounts of press intrusion.
Yeah, I did.
But then you had Atlanta and it was like, OK, not OK anymore.
Yeah, it was just done for me.
What was it about having Atlanta that changed everything?
I think having a daughter at 19 allowed me to... get my focus off of myself and onto someone else, which is always helpful. It's so unhealthy to be a person who has that much attention on them because then you're focusing on yourself to such a degree that like that's all you think about. And so to have Atlanta and to be able to think about someone else and to want to protect her and take care of her in a way that like I didn't feel like I had had. And I just didn't want anyone photographing her.
It was a difficult one for me, though, Davina, at the time because that was also coming off the back of when I'd seen the face. And I think there was a lot of hostility.
Can we talk about that? Sure. I think it's important to talk about it because it was a big thing at the time for you. They did something terrible, I think.
Mm. What happened was, you know, to contextualize the whole thing was that Outing was a campaign that really began in America, New York specifically, by militant activists sort of wanting to out prominent politicians specifically who were legislating against gay rights at the time. Fair enough. Fair enough. And, you know, set the board sort of equal. I think it sort of shifted focus. to include celebrities like tom cruise whitney houston it went across the pond and of course jason donovan joseph london palladium quite an easy target coat speculation had always surfaced about the blonde-haired blue-eyed kid you know um
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Chapters
3 chapters
1
How did Amanda describe the paparazzi and press intrusion that led her to leave the UK?
0:00–1:14
2
What specific examples of body-shaming and breastfeeding photos did Amanda recount?
1:14–7:33
3
How did Amanda explain the moment she decided to move to Los Angeles and leave her life behind?
7:33–10:15
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Begin Again with Davina McCall
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