When it comes to stories about being a woman in media, there’s definitely something in the air at the moment. We recently dropped a Booksmart podcast episode that explored If I Ruled the World – a novel based on Amy DuBois Barnett’s real-life experiences working as a Black editor at major American magazines.
Now, Booksmart looks at a new release closer to home, as hosts Sunny Adcock and Allie Daisy King sit down with Georgie Tunny to discuss her book, Over To You.
If you’re also based in Australia, chances are that you’ve come across Georgie’s work in the past. She’s previously been a TV presenter on ABC News Breakfast, before working as a co-host on the now-axed Channel 10 news and current affairs program, The Project.
With more than a decade-long career in media, Georgie draws on her experiences to depict the complexities of the newsroom in her entertaining debut novel. Over to You follows three best friends Carter, Naya, and Greta, as they navigate the competitive Australian media industry while trying to hold their friendship together.
For Georgie, it was very important to show young women’s experiences of navigating complex female friendships against the backdrop of career ambition – and the competitiveness it can drive.
“At its heart, it’s about how you survive the kind of love that this friendship has, when all that you want in the world is this one particular job,” says Georgie, “and the people that are going to keep it from you are your favourite humans on the planet”.
“Yes, there’s romance in there as well,” she explains to Sunny and Allie. “There’s a little bit of that, but I wanted the friendship to be the thing. I wanted the female friendship to be the focus of the whole book, because I’m obsessed with female friendship. I’m obsessed with girlhood. I have been for my entire life.”
As is the case in many industries, the stakes are often higher for women. Do things get messier when you and your female friends are potentially pitted against one another? How do you separate the personal and professional in this context? How has Georgie dealt with these very issues in her own life? Taking all of this into consideration, Allie puts an important question to the author.
“Given a major theme of the book is ambition alongside the complexities of female friends, how have you managed to build and maintain close relationships with female peers in an industry that all too often is pitting women against one another?” Allie asks Georgie. “And how did that impact the relationships of the characters in the book?”
Georgie acknowledges it’s been “hard” and “tricky” at times when navigating these situations in real life.
“But ultimately what made my brain able to handle that is [asking myself] is it a dichotomy, or you know, contradiction, almost, about wanting something so much, but then still being happy for your friend if they get it and not you?” she reflects on her thought process in dealing with it. “And it was just an acceptance,” she continues.
“Sure, at times it’s like a white-knuckled acceptance. But it’s okay to be desperately sad that you didn’t get an opportunity, but then be outrageously happy that someone you loved did.”
Georgie explains that with time comes experience, as well as the skills to better deal with challenging situations and the emotions they can spark.
“All of my friends within the media industry, especially my female friends, I would say we’re so open about that. Like, you just have to be able to say the words,” she says. “Earlier in my career, I didn’t have the vocab for that. I didn’t have the emotional maturity for that, and I lost friends because of it.
“And I think that a part of what I wanted to create with these girls [in the book], is that a lot of where their tension comes from, and the problems that they go through within their friendship, is from what they don’t say.
“They’re not actually telling each other why life is hard for them right now. They’re not telling each other, ‘Actually this is the bit that I’m really struggling with’.”
Georgie says women often don’y want to be a “burden” on their female friends, or just simply don’t want their friends to know exactly how raw their feelings and emotions are. Saying it’s common in many friendships, Georgie believes this theme will resonate with a wide range of readers.
And then… what happens when the world of media is thrown into the mix? “I think that’s a universal emotion that every female friendship goes through, just with the backdrop of the media industry, it’s more public,” she explains. “It’s also… just maybe hits that little bit harder because it is so high stakes, and the cortisol roller coaster.”
Of course, these thought-provoking points in themselves opened the dialogue to lots more during this podcast chat. Sunny, Allie and Georgie also bonded over their shared love of Taylor Swift, and their unyielding adoration of the way shared interests create immediate, authentic connections between strangers.
You can listen to the rest of the Booksmart podcast episode here, and get your copy of Over To You at QBD Books using our special link here.