As the Today show shuts up shops for summer, Sinead Kennedy chats to Elle Gordon about life in the public eye, doing things differently, and watching her daughter light up the room.
Sinead Kennedy is chatting to me from her car, just after finishing the cover photoshoot. She is looking very glam and yet, the television presenter, documentary maker, and co-host on the Today show with Maura Derrane and Dáithí Ó Sé, assures me that a cover shoot is way out of her comfort zone.
After this particularly glam day, she is off home to two-year-old Indie, her daughter with husband Conor Kirwan (who works in the European Defence Agency in Belgium).
Sinead laughs, "I will be going straight home. Indie will tell me my make-up is lovely and then we will go to bed. I am probably the most awkward on a photoshoot person ever. I absolutely hate getting my picture taken. I suppose because I work as a TV presenter that people assume you want all forms of attention and that you want cameras on you at all times.
"I am either a complete outlier in that respect or maybe most of us are a little bit like this. But, I am not a model; it doesn't come naturally to me, TV is a different ball game. But when you have a fantastic team at a shoot, that’s half the battle so who can complain? I got to wear fabulous clothes and I have got my hair and make-up done and I got to hang out in the sunshine all day."
The Today show is just about to wrap for summer. Does that feel like 'school’s out for the summer?’
"It’s funny. This is my third year on the show but it is my first year doing a full season. I was pregnant when I started the first season and then I took extended maternity leave so this is my first time actually putting in a proper shift from September to May.
"It is full-on when you’re in, but it is one of those things you get so used to. And summers for me are always a slower time. Winning Streak was September to May and a lot of the young people’s programmes I did were the same. So it does feel like school is out in one sense. It’s not the same in any sense that I am dying to finish, because I love it, but I am certainly keen to enjoy my time off. Best of both worlds!"
As we chat, someone knocks on Sinead’s car window just to say hello: I wonder how much she enjoys the idea of the Today show as a friendly presence in people’s daytime lives.
She smiles, "With something like the Today show, I think it is nice that people kind of get to know you a bit better. You are kind of in their lives every day for two and a half hours and so you would never get away with being disingenuous. I think people get a sense of who you are, how you are, and what you are about. You couldn’t fake it; it would take more energy to fake it than it does to actually do the job. It feels so natural to me and it’s a good fit."
Does she mind the scrutiny that comes with being in the public eye?
"Everybody likes to be liked. You don’t want people saying awful things about you, but it is just a fact of the matter. If you are in the public eye at all, people love to tell you how they feel about you. People would come up to me – now generally they are really nice – but what I get most is, ‘I didn’t like your hair last week’ or they hate your laugh. I totally get it. We all have reasons we prefer someone over another and that is fine.
"I am not going to pretend I have a really thick skin and comments don’t bother me. They do. The really rude ones do or the ones that are really inaccurate drive me mad. But I try not to take them to heart. ‘What other people think of you is none of your business.’
"I think until I started the Today show, I hadn’t dealt with that amount of trolling online. I couldn’t figure it out. Was it always there and I just wasn’t aware of it? I don’t know but it seemed to increase when I joined the Today show. I knew the only thing I could do was control my response to it so I deleted Facebook. If I don’t have it; it is not going to change what Mary or John or whoever thinks of me, but I don’t have to see it. Life is much better this way."
I wonder if becoming a mother has changed how she responds to behaviour like trolling or online criticism. "I think you change a lot when you become a Mom," she says. "You’re too tired and you don’t have the time for it. It does make me think, ‘God, I would never want my daughter to have to deal with any of this’ and it also makes me go, ‘Ah yeah, she will never get a phone’. Growing up online is such a different reality now."
People say motherhood is a love like no other. Is that the case?
"Before I had Indie, I would hear people talk like that and I would think, ‘Ah yeah, isn’t that lovely for them.’ And then I had my baby and you become the cliché. My friends were all laughing at me anyway. They were like, ‘You have always been such a softie, so how you thought you were going to be any other way is beyond us?’ I am an absolute sucker. If she was a little wagon, maybe I would be saying something else, but she is a dreamboat.
"That poor child has been on more flights than I care to count because my husband Conor is in Belgium for his work, and it’s not easy to do that amount of travelling, but she is just so chilled and happy. She is a joy. She lights up a room. Who knew a two-year-old could do that? And it does make me go, ‘Oh, there is more to life than my job.’ I still love work but now I am dying to get out the door when the work is done."
She and husband Conor currently have a long-distance relationship and I get the impression they have made it work. "Yes. We shipped our entire life to Belgium three years ago this summer. There is a lot of travelling. We are both wrecked but it is just the way things are for the moment. I am going there for the summer. I will get on a plane in a few weeks and I will be back in September. It will be glorious.
"It works for us. Although, if we are going to be real about it, apart from a two-year-old running riot in the airport, the more important aspect for me is that she is getting to the point where she wants to see her Daddy every day. He is going to be there for quite some time yet. I think Conor is the good future planner in the family. Right now, I am just thinking about the summer. I will leave early June and I will switch off completely. I won’t bat an eyelid. Belgium is a home from home."
