Speaker 1: Tammy Hembro is Australia's most talked about influencer. At nineteen,
Speaker 1: she made it big on social media when she shared
Speaker 1: her fitness journey while pregnant.
Speaker 2: This is my first blog again, so like it might
Speaker 2: be a little bad. I don't know if it's going
Speaker 2: to be boring or what, but hope you guys enjoy it.
Speaker 1: Tammy's life is far from boring. The fitness influencer and
Speaker 1: her family are Australia's answer to the Kardashians. In fact,
Speaker 1: she's even been involved in a few Kardashian scandals herself.
Speaker 3: A model explains why she had to leave Kaylie Janno's
Speaker 3: Los Angeles birthday party in a stretcher.
Speaker 1: By sharing her life online, Tammy has attracted over twenty
Speaker 1: million followers and built an empire worth fifty million dollars.
Speaker 1: What has really kept her followers glued are her romantic relationships.
Speaker 1: Over the last ten years, the internet has borne witness
Speaker 1: to three engagements, three children, one epic wedding and now
Speaker 1: a divorce. We are journalist Sophie and Kate Talbert and
Speaker 1: in this special Outspoken series, we explored the real story
Speaker 1: behind the rise of Tammy Hembro. This is going to
Speaker 1: be our most highly requested deep dive. Every time we
Speaker 1: put up a question box asking who you want us
Speaker 1: to discuss, Tammy Hembro is number one. There's a definite
Speaker 1: fascination with her and I can see why because she
Speaker 1: has lived her life so publicly for so long now,
Speaker 1: but she's always kept it interesting for us. She's always
Speaker 1: kept her followers on their toes, particularly when it comes
Speaker 1: to her relationships. Oh she has now I want to
Speaker 1: go back to the beginning. So. Tammy was born on
Speaker 1: the twenty second of April nineteen ninety four to her parents,
Speaker 1: Natalie Stanley and Mark Hembro. So it's pretty crazy because
Speaker 1: her parents actually met in Trinidad Tobago back in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine when her dad was acting in a TV
Speaker 1: show called The Last Island. So Natalie was born in
Speaker 1: Trinidad and ended up moving back to Australia with Mark.
Speaker 1: So Tammy was the youngest of her parents' three daughters.
Speaker 1: She grew up with her sisters Amy and Emily, who
Speaker 1: are four and two years old at rest, respectively. Tammy
Speaker 1: has described her childhood as being simple but fun. Her
Speaker 1: family moved around a bit but she spent most of
Speaker 1: her younger years in the Curumbin Valley, which is a
Speaker 1: really beautiful part of the Gold Coast which actually borders
Speaker 1: with New South Wales and it used to be part
Speaker 1: of the Southeast Queensland Rainforest. And am I surprise people
Speaker 1: to hear? But the town that Tammy grew up in
Speaker 1: had just eighty people, while only a handful of kids
Speaker 1: went to her primary school. And Tammy said that she
Speaker 1: was naturally a very shy kid who was a barefoot
Speaker 1: flower child. It did surprise me that she grew up
Speaker 1: in such a small town. She doesn't really give off
Speaker 1: small town vibes, does show now while she was a
Speaker 1: shy kid, she grew up wanting to follow in her
Speaker 1: dad's footsteps and become an actor. So in Tammy's book
Speaker 1: Step Up, she described her dad as being somewhat famous
Speaker 1: in Australia. So I had to do a stalk of
Speaker 1: Mark Hembrose Wikipedia. And he was a guest actor in
Speaker 1: a lot of eighties and nineties TV shows that I'm
Speaker 1: not familiar with, as well as acting in a lot
Speaker 1: of theater productions. The one TV role I got excited
Speaker 1: about was he was a guest singer on Mister Squiggle.
Speaker 1: He also played Georgie Saint on fifty five episodes of
Speaker 1: The Young Doctors in the late seventies. He was interviewed
Speaker 1: on Matt Zakowski's podcast Hastened to That one. He you
Speaker 1: could tell he loved talking about his acting days. Can
Speaker 1: you say about himself? That made me that too. He
Speaker 1: was very sweet. He seemed very eccentric. That's the vibe
Speaker 1: that I got.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, Tammy's parents ended up getting divorced when she and
Speaker 1: her sisters were very young, and in her book, Tammy
Speaker 1: said her parents fought a lot, to the point where
Speaker 1: her sisters and her don't know how they were even together.
Speaker 1: And when her parents split, Tammy and her sisters ended
Speaker 1: up living with their dad on a farm. So the
Speaker 1: house they lived in was this old reception venue where
Speaker 1: they used tables as walls and they had an outside bath.
Speaker 1: After seeing the lifestyle that Tammy is living now, I
Speaker 1: can't picture her living on a farm, but it is
Speaker 1: quite nice to know these details about her childhood now.
Speaker 1: Tammy's mum, Natalie, went on to marry a successful businesess
Speaker 1: man and had four more children, ava Scarlet, Honre and Maximus,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people have compared Natalie to Chris Jennet.
Speaker 1: That is because there has always been this comparison that
Speaker 1: the Hembros are Australia's answer to the Kardashian family because
Speaker 1: there's so many sisters, so many siblings, and also because
Speaker 1: Tammy's mom looks a bit like Chris Jenny. I mean,
Speaker 1: there is an uncanny resemblance there. She has got the
Speaker 1: dark hair, she definitely looks a lot like her. I
Speaker 1: think the comparison between the Hembros and the Kardashians is
Speaker 1: often made also because there was a crossover there, and
Speaker 1: we will go into that later in this series. Now,
Speaker 1: when Tammy was twelve, she decided to move to Singapore
Speaker 1: to be with her mum and her stepdad and her
Speaker 1: sisters Amy and Emily had already made the move to
Speaker 1: the island country, but Tammy saw out her primary schooling
Speaker 1: in Queensland. So Tammy's life in Singapore was the complete
Speaker 1: opposite of what she'd been living in rural Queensland. Her
Speaker 1: stepdad was, as you said, Sophi, an extremely successful businessman
Speaker 1: and they were living an absolute life of luxury, and
Speaker 1: Tammy said it was unlike anything she had seen up
Speaker 1: close before and had only seen in the movies. Why
Speaker 1: am I getting crazy rich agents in my head? I
Speaker 1: love that movie. We have been visiting Singapore since our
Speaker 1: early teenage years, and it is such an incredible place.
Speaker 1: Like you say that as if we're there all the time.
Speaker 1: I think I've been there like five times. Five times
Speaker 1: is quite a lot. I love in Singapore how you
Speaker 1: can only drive a new car, so there's only new
Speaker 1: cars on the road. You can't have an old bomb.
Speaker 1: A lot of people are walking around in designer gear.
Speaker 1: It's got a very rich vibe to it. In Tammy's books,
Speaker 1: she wrote a lot about what a pivotal part her
Speaker 1: stepdad's library played in this change. She said that reading
Speaker 1: books about successful business people in the library made her
Speaker 1: want to become one herself. I love the fact that
Speaker 1: they were living in such an opulent house that they
Speaker 1: had their own library. I think that really bates a
Speaker 1: picture of our successful He was in business. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it was clear that Tammy was really motivated by this
Speaker 1: success that she saw with her stepdad and wanted to
Speaker 1: follow in his entrepreneurial footsteps. Knowing that she wanted to
Speaker 1: make it big for a long time, Tammy didn't know
Speaker 1: what she actually wanted to do. And Tammy said she
Speaker 1: began spiraling after leaving high school and started partying and
Speaker 1: smoking weed and she had no motivation and felt lost
Speaker 1: and depressed. And that was until she discovered meditation, which
Speaker 1: she said changed her. So from meditation, she turned to
Speaker 1: yoga and became an instructor and she then found her
Speaker 1: passion for fitness and exercise in the gym. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: when she moved back to Australia, she ended up enrolling
Speaker 1: in a business degree at Bond University and chose to
Speaker 1: study business for two reasons. The first was she wanted
Speaker 1: to follow in a step dad's footsteps, and the second
Speaker 1: was because she didn't want to work at nine to five,
Speaker 1: which a lot of us can relate to. While Tammy
Speaker 1: was starting at university, this is when she started to
Speaker 1: share fitness content on her Instagram. And this was at
Speaker 1: a time when Instagram was really at its infancy stage.
Speaker 1: No one was sharing content like this, and it didn't
Speaker 1: take Tammy long to hit fifteen thousand followers on the platform,
Speaker 1: which was a pretty substantial following back then because Instagram,
Speaker 1: as you said, it wasn't very popular. We didn't have
Speaker 1: heaps of influencers on it like we do now, And
Speaker 1: in the meantime, Tammy wasn't enjoying UNI. The only class
Speaker 1: that really made sense to her was one about entrepreneurship,
Speaker 1: and it was in that class that she decided she
Speaker 1: wanted to be her own boss, and she figured she
Speaker 1: may as well make the most of the following she
Speaker 1: had and launched a business. So at nineteen, with one
Speaker 1: month of her studies to go, Tammy dropped out of
Speaker 1: UNI to become an entrepreneur. I don't get this. Why
Speaker 1: would you not just stick it out for one more month? No,
Speaker 1: just to get the piece of paper. Yeah, because it
Speaker 1: gives you so much credibility and something to fall back
Speaker 1: on if things didn't go to plan. I remember hearing
Speaker 1: that Sarah's day had I think one semester left or
Speaker 1: half a year left of her teaching degree, and it
Speaker 1: always surprised me that she didn't just complete it. Mmmm.
Speaker 1: I know, I really don't get it either.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Life had other plans for Tammy, though. Just as she
Speaker 1: started working on her business idea, she accidentally fell pregnant
Speaker 1: with her first son, Wolf. She was just nineteen at
Speaker 1: the time, and was told her life was ruined. That's terrible.
Speaker 1: It is as a message to tell someone who has
Speaker 1: fallen pregnant unexpectedly so young. Well, she really showed everyone,
Speaker 1: didn't She Now her baby daddy was Reese Hawkins, a
Speaker 1: guy Tammy had been dating for only a few months.
Speaker 1: In a YouTube Q and A in twenty sixteen, this
Speaker 1: is what Tammy said about her timeline with Reese. How
Speaker 1: long have me and Race been together?
Speaker 3: We've been together like three years? Well longer than three years. Wait,
Speaker 3: how's Wolf? We weren't together for that long before we
Speaker 3: found out we're pregnant with Wolf. Actually probably just like
Speaker 3: a couple of months. That sounds so bad, but we
Speaker 3: were actually like so in love, like we knew we
Speaker 3: wanted to be together forever anyway already. Like I'm pretty
Speaker 3: sure Reese told me he was in love with me
Speaker 3: like a week after we met, and I didn't say
Speaker 3: it back, And I'm kidding I did.
Speaker 1: I loved watching this whole Q and A, the way
Speaker 1: she spoke about Reese. It was so funny watching about
Speaker 1: knowing what we all know now, just seeing how young
Speaker 1: and in love they actually were at the time. It
Speaker 1: sounds very old school because they actually met at a bar,
Speaker 1: which obviously everyone seemed to meet on the apps or
Speaker 1: by sliding into DMS now and Tammy said it was
Speaker 1: love at first sight. He's more of what she said
Speaker 1: about that encounter.
Speaker 3: We first met at a bar. I was actually pretty intoxicated,
Speaker 3: not gonna lie. I was with a couple of girlfriends
Speaker 3: and our friends were friends with his friends. When I
Speaker 3: first saw him, I went up to him and I
Speaker 3: grabbed his face, and I was like, you are so beautiful,
Speaker 3: because he was literally like the most beautiful man I
Speaker 3: ever saw. So it was kind of love at first sight.
Speaker 3: I didn't honestly, I didn't remember the full night like
Speaker 3: all that clearly. But the next weekend I was going
Speaker 3: to a friend's party. He was actually like really good
Speaker 3: friends with the guy who was having the party, so
Speaker 3: he was there as well, which was just such a coincidence,
Speaker 3: and we just talked on night. We hung out together
Speaker 3: that whole night time at the party. We fell in
Speaker 3: love from there. We were just inseparable. He was obsessed
Speaker 3: with me, like he was not gonna lie, pretty obsessed
Speaker 3: with me. But I was obsessed with him too.
Speaker 1: So I love that she grabbed his face and said
Speaker 1: he was a beautiful man. Because she's right, he is
Speaker 1: a stunning looking man, say aesthetically a beautiful man. Well.
Speaker 1: As for finding out she was pregnant with Wolf, Tammy
Speaker 1: said that she and Reese were both in shock. According
Speaker 1: to Tammy, she couldn't speak and Reese looked like he
Speaker 1: was about to pass out. Once they did get over
Speaker 1: the initial shock, though, they said that they were both
Speaker 1: very excited now. When it came to choosing the now
Speaker 1: infamous name, Tammy said.
Speaker 2: This, what made you name wolf?
Speaker 3: Wolf? We were in the car one day and I
Speaker 3: just remember throwing it out, was like wolf, and I
Speaker 3: think Reese was like at first, like I don't think so,
Speaker 3: but then it grew on him and he was like, yeah.
Speaker 3: We had a few other names as well, but all
Speaker 3: the names that I liked were like really out there.
Speaker 3: A wolf was one we chose.
Speaker 1: I want to know what these other names were, because
Speaker 1: for me, particularly ten years ago or over ten years ago,
Speaker 1: wolf would have been pretty out Yeah. The other names
Speaker 1: must have been are really out there now if you
Speaker 1: do cast him mind. Back to twenty twenty two, Kylie
Speaker 1: Jenner and Travis Scott originally named their son Wolf, but
Speaker 1: later changed his name to Air, and almost two months
Speaker 1: after giving birth, Kylie wrote on her Instagram story, FYI,
Speaker 1: our son's name isn't Wolf anymore. We just really didn't
Speaker 1: feel like it was him. Just wanted to share because
Speaker 1: I keep seeing Wolf everywhere. It's rumored that Kylie changed
Speaker 1: the name because of Tammy. We will go into Tammy's
Speaker 1: connection to the Kardashians a little bit later, but from
Speaker 1: a top level. Kylie and Tammy became friends after she
Speaker 1: modeled for Chloe's brand Good American, and Tammy was infamously
Speaker 1: stretched out of Kylie's twenty first birthday party and was
Speaker 1: also linked to Kylie's ex Tiger, So it is likely
Speaker 1: that Kylie was well aware of Tammy's son's name, and
Speaker 1: just hours after Kylie went public with her son's name,
Speaker 1: Tammy shared a photo of her and her son Wolf
Speaker 1: with the caption Wolfe's mum. At the time, Tammy was
Speaker 1: also pregnant with her third child, Posey, and she had
Speaker 1: a lot of people trying to guess her unborn child's name.
Speaker 1: Tammy responded to one of the name guesses on TikTok
Speaker 1: with the comment, actually like the name Stormy. At the moment.
Speaker 1: Stormy Now is, of course the name of Kylie's first child.
Speaker 1: I absolutely love the pettiness of influencer and celebrity baby
Speaker 1: names because it's the biggest fuck you if you copy
Speaker 1: someone's name. But in the real world it would be
Speaker 1: taken as quite a compliment if you like someone's name.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think there would still be people that would be annoyed,
Speaker 1: particularly if you had had a run in with that person.
Speaker 1: But I think the influencers are just trying so hard
Speaker 1: to be unique. Yeah, there is an element of that too.
Speaker 1: Now back to nineteen year old Tammy. After dropping out
Speaker 1: of UNI, she found herself pregnant and working as a
Speaker 1: telemarketer selling solar panels while she worked on her business idea.
Speaker 1: And Tammy said that the job sucked and she would
Speaker 1: cry after shifts because people would hang up on her.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine if you were someone that got a
Speaker 1: call from Tammy herbroke Why do I feel like she
Speaker 1: wouldn't be that good on the phone. I feel like
Speaker 1: she would grumble in that situation. I think anyone would.
Speaker 1: It doesn't sound like a fun job. No, Well, she
Speaker 1: ended up leaving that job to work in a clothing store,
Speaker 1: but she said that she was barely making ends meet
Speaker 1: and the highlight of her day was posting about the gym,
Speaker 1: so she went five times a week even while she
Speaker 1: was pregnant. And while most people love that she was young, pregnant,
Speaker 1: and positive, Tammy also copped criticism online for working out
Speaker 1: while she was pregnant. She was even told that her
Speaker 1: body wouldn't be the same after she had a baby,
Speaker 1: so she couldn't be a fitness guru. I'm really feeling
Speaker 1: for nineteen year old Tammy here. It seems like she
Speaker 1: is facing some very unfair judgment and criticism now. In
Speaker 1: her book, Tammy said that when people tell her she
Speaker 1: can't do something, it gives her more motivation. So it
Speaker 1: seemed like this really made her more determined to prove
Speaker 1: the naysayers wrong, and she forged ahead with the idea
Speaker 1: of her own business. And ironically, Tammy's following skyrocketed when
Speaker 1: she started sharing about her pregnancy and motherhood alongside fitness Now.
Speaker 1: The goal was to save enough money to launch her
Speaker 1: business idea, a fitness ebook called Tammy Fit, and she
Speaker 1: was motivated to launch an e book because her gym
Speaker 1: post got so many likes that she figured a workout
Speaker 1: guide was the perfect business idea. The initial outlay was
Speaker 1: four hundred dollars for someone to illustrate the exercises in
Speaker 1: the PDF, so once she saved the money, she quit
Speaker 1: her job in retail and focused on tammy Fit full time. Now.
Speaker 1: The launch of tammy Fit coincided with another massive milestone
Speaker 1: for Tammy, the birth of her first child, so Wolfe
Speaker 1: was born via an emergency C section. Tammy did plan
Speaker 1: on having a vaginal birth without medical intervention, but said
Speaker 1: it didn't take long for her to be rolling on
Speaker 1: the floor in pain, begging for an epidural, but instead
Speaker 1: the best of us, doesn't it now. Unfortunately, a Wolf's
Speaker 1: heartbeat was elevated and he was in distress, so they
Speaker 1: opted for the emergency C section. I feel like Tammy
Speaker 1: was really clever and strategic about the release date because
Speaker 1: almost immediately after the birth of wolf that's when she
Speaker 1: launched her fitness ebook, and that is when so many
Speaker 1: eyeballs would have been on her page because so many
Speaker 1: people were so interested in this young mum who was
Speaker 1: having her first child at nineteen. I mean, yes, it
Speaker 1: was a strategic move in the sense that people would
Speaker 1: buy it, but it was really difficult for her personally
Speaker 1: because it was such a double whammy for her. She
Speaker 1: was dealing with being a first time mum and also
Speaker 1: a first time business owner, so in between looking after
Speaker 1: her newborn son, Wolf, Tammy sent out the PDFs herself.
Speaker 1: She also started earning money from Instagram promotions, and she
Speaker 1: saved all the money she earned from the PDFs and
Speaker 1: her Instagram promos and put it all back into her
Speaker 1: her business. So she decided to take her PDF guides
Speaker 1: to the next level and launched an app. At the time,
Speaker 1: no one else was doing fitness apps, and Tammy did
Speaker 1: what her stepdad taught her capitalize, reinvest, and grow, so
Speaker 1: all the money she earned was invested straight back into
Speaker 1: the Tammy Fit app. We now know that app has
Speaker 1: been downloaded over one point seven million times. It's pretty
Speaker 1: remarkable and I don't think enough people give Tammy Hembro
Speaker 1: credit over her business brain and just how she was
Speaker 1: able to grow something from nothing.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, the accolades did begin rolling in for Tammy Hembro
Speaker 1: and critics started calling her an overnight success. But before
Speaker 1: she even had the chance to revel in her success,
Speaker 1: life threw another challenge at her at twenty one, she
Speaker 1: became pregnant with her second child, sas Gear, when Wolf
Speaker 1: was just six months old. She also now had a
Speaker 1: million dollar business to look after. Whilst this would be challenging,
Speaker 1: I think it also worked really well for her Instagram
Speaker 1: because people were excited that there was another pregnancy that
Speaker 1: they could follow along with. I mean, it's a bit
Speaker 1: confusing whether this pregnancy was planned or not, because in
Speaker 1: Tammy's book she acted as if falling pregnant a second
Speaker 1: time wasn't planned. But in a Q and A back
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen, she said this and.
Speaker 3: Saskia was planned. We were like, let's just get another
Speaker 3: one out of the way, so then we'll has a
Speaker 3: little friend to play with. I didn't realize how hard
Speaker 3: it would actually be, but is so. I'm glad we
Speaker 3: had both of them and the most beautiful, amazing thing
Speaker 3: that's ever happened to us.
Speaker 1: I feel like Tammy would have said that Saski was
Speaker 1: planned due to a lot of judgment online and oh
Speaker 1: this is a mistake. Oh they haven't been together for
Speaker 1: very long. Yeah, exactly. She probably felt like she needed
Speaker 1: to defend it, and now years later she can say, actually,
Speaker 1: it wasn't a planned thing. Now. Tammy wanted to try
Speaker 1: a vaginal birth with Saskia, but by the end of
Speaker 1: her pregnancy she discovered she had a condition which created
Speaker 1: extra amnionic fluid around the baby, so she was advised
Speaker 1: to have another C section. Saskia was born at thirty
Speaker 1: seven weeks and five days, and the post birth recovery
Speaker 1: was really tough on Tammy. Her scarcely open and she
Speaker 1: had to have it dressed and packed every day for
Speaker 1: a month. Looking back at an old blog from this time,
Speaker 1: I was really shocked to discover the whole Saskia was
Speaker 1: a month old, her dad, Reese Hawkins, went on a
Speaker 1: boy's trip to Bali. Keep in mind Tammy was still
Speaker 1: having to get her scar dressed daily, and at this
Speaker 1: point she also had a toddler to look after. So
Speaker 1: Red Flagg got a good move, and knowing what I
Speaker 1: know now, it is clear that things were becoming rocky
Speaker 1: between the pair. As a viewer, it appeared like Tammy
Speaker 1: was doing everything while he was doing the absolute bare minimum. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in one blog I saw he was complaining about how
Speaker 1: tired he was, Yet Tammy had been the one getting
Speaker 1: up and doing all of the feeding with a newborn
Speaker 1: without any help. In Tammy's book, she opened up about
Speaker 1: this and wrote, my partner was busy when the babies
Speaker 1: were born, so it was all down to me. I
Speaker 1: was determined to do it all by myself, which again
Speaker 1: highlights to me how remarkable this woman is. She's nineteen
Speaker 1: and twenty one and she's running a business whilst looking
Speaker 1: after two very young kids. Rather than slowing down, Tammy
Speaker 1: did the complete opposite. So, with two children under two
Speaker 1: and a million dollar business to run, Tammy decided to
Speaker 1: launch an active wear brand, Saskia Collection, named after her
Speaker 1: newborn daughter. A lot of people thought she was taking
Speaker 1: on too much, but for Tammy, it was a move
Speaker 1: that felt right. She's very smart. She knew that she
Speaker 1: had to strike while the iron's hot. She has a
Speaker 1: newborn daughter, there's a lot of interest around her. Let's
Speaker 1: launch an active wear brand named after the daughter, who
Speaker 1: has a unique name.
Speaker 2: It is genius.
Speaker 1: It was a smart move because she had a lot
Speaker 1: of brands who wanted to sponsor her, and she was
Speaker 1: having to wear these brands on her Instagram even though
Speaker 1: she didn't actually like any of the clothes and For Tammy,
Speaker 1: she had started her own business so she didn't have
Speaker 1: to do what people told her to do, and she
Speaker 1: was starting to I feel like she had a boss
Speaker 1: telling her what to wear and when to wear it,
Speaker 1: and she didn't like it, so she's like, I just
Speaker 1: want to make my own clothing line. That's interesting because Kayla,
Speaker 1: it'ds seen, has had a similar philosophy where she didn't
Speaker 1: want to have so many sponsored posts on her Instagram.
Speaker 1: She wanted to have her own app and her own
Speaker 1: brand so that she didn't have to rely on it.
Speaker 1: And Kayla has been someone even though she doesn't have
Speaker 1: her own active wear brand, who has just worn whatever
Speaker 1: whatever she likes, not because she's getting paid to do so. Hmmm. Well,
Speaker 1: with Tammy, it got to the point where she couldn't
Speaker 1: physically do it all anymore with her two businesses, and
Speaker 1: finally she asked for some help and that came in
Speaker 1: the form of her older sister Amy working with her
Speaker 1: at sask A Collection. And at the time, sadly, Tammy
Speaker 1: felt like she couldn't trust outsiders because she had people
Speaker 1: trying to leach off her. There'd be so many people
Speaker 1: trying to grow a following off the back of her
Speaker 1: and potentially also people spreading rumors about her and her
Speaker 1: relationship if they got into deep Yeah, exactly, and with
Speaker 1: Amy being her sister, she felt like she could trust her,
Speaker 1: plus she actually had her own business experience. Unfortunately, though,
Speaker 1: it didn't take long for things to deteriorate between the sisters,
Speaker 1: so Tammy and Amy began having constant arguments about the
Speaker 1: direction of the business, and Tammy felt like Amy wouldn't
Speaker 1: listen to her or respect that she was the boss. Oh,
Speaker 1: we've all been there before, haven't we running businesses with sisters.
Speaker 1: It's a very interesting dynamic because I feel like everyone
Speaker 1: wants to be the boss, and it would be difficult
Speaker 1: having your younger sister telling you what to do. It's
Speaker 1: particularly difficult when you're all the same age and you'll
Speaker 1: want to be the boss's well or. Tammy actually ended
Speaker 1: up firing Amy from her role as general manager of
Speaker 1: Saskia Collection. It's just something that we would do, and
Speaker 1: Tammy says their relationship improved as soon as they stopped
Speaker 1: working together. Is that a bit of a sign? Okay, no,
Speaker 1: we will still be working together. Funnily enough, Amy is
Speaker 1: now the general manager of Tammy fit and Tammy says
Speaker 1: Amy was instrumental in her business's success, so maybe it
Speaker 1: was just the wrong business model. Yeah, And in an
Speaker 1: interview she said she wouldn't have been able to do
Speaker 1: it without Amy. Lovely Now. In her book, Tammy revealed
Speaker 1: that relationships are the most important thing to her, but
Speaker 1: it also her Achilles heel, which I think we can
Speaker 1: all probably agree upon. She said she was struggling to
Speaker 1: juggle her business and personal life and then everything came
Speaker 1: tumbling down. After four years, two children, and a pear
Speaker 1: shaped engagement ring, Tammy broke up with Reese Hawkins in
Speaker 1: June twenty eighteen, and in her book, Tammy explained it
Speaker 1: got to the point where every time she spoke to
Speaker 1: Reese things fell further apart.
Speaker 2: Of course, there's love there and kids involved too, so
Speaker 2: you try again and again as hard as you can
Speaker 2: to make it work until it doesn't. For a long time,
Speaker 2: feeling guilty about the inevitable fallout stopped me from taking
Speaker 2: the action I knew my partner and I needed. When
Speaker 2: things don't work out, many people find it hard not
Speaker 2: to blame themselves, and sure, I'm all for a ability,
Speaker 2: but in these situations. It's not really your fault or
Speaker 2: the other person's fault either. It's the relationship. The relationship failed,
Speaker 2: not you, not one, not the other, but your combination.
Speaker 1: Now Tammy said it took everything within her to see
Speaker 1: it as a failed relationship rather than a failed Tammy
Speaker 1: and to keep going. She said she felt intense guilt,
Speaker 1: which made her want to become a supermum. She wrote,
Speaker 1: I told myself I had to do it all to
Speaker 1: be at all. There's no mother guilt like broken relationship,
Speaker 1: mother guilt and desperation that your kids won't be sad
Speaker 1: because of it. In her book, Tammy didn't refer to
Speaker 1: Reese by his name, but instead called him Wolf and
Speaker 1: Saskia's dad. And in recent years she's tried to be
Speaker 1: really respectful of Reese and the role that he plays
Speaker 1: in his kids lives because she's really aware that anything
Speaker 1: she says about him in the media, her kids can
Speaker 1: go and read. Yeah. She has put a lot of
Speaker 1: effort into her co parenting relationship with Reese Hawkins. Now.
Speaker 1: Tammy revealed that breaking up with Reese was the hardest
Speaker 1: thing she's ever gone through as a child of divorce parents.
Speaker 1: She hated the idea of becoming a single mum, and
Speaker 1: she had been so determined to make things work, but
Speaker 1: in the end, she said that they were young, and
Speaker 1: people change.
Speaker 2: We grew in opposite directions. What do you do when
Speaker 2: your home life isn't the happy dream your heart chose
Speaker 2: for you? Do you stay together for the kids? The
Speaker 2: longer we stayed together, the more unhappy our home became,
Speaker 2: and I didn't want to want my kid's idea of
Speaker 2: what a healthy relationship looks like. In the end, it
Speaker 2: was a straightforward decision. Do what was best for my
Speaker 2: home and my children, do what was best for us all.
Speaker 1: No one can underestimate how huge this breakup was on
Speaker 1: social media. As you touched on Kate, we'd had this
Speaker 1: perfect engagement with the pear shaped ring, which a lot
Speaker 1: of people have focused on in years to come because
Speaker 1: people liked to compare her different engagement rings. But they
Speaker 1: really did hold up this idea that they were the
Speaker 1: perfect young couple. Everyone thought, Wow, I want to be
Speaker 1: a young mom and dad like Reese and Tammy, and
Speaker 1: then that illusion seemed to be shattered when they broke up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is the point where everyone became utterly obsessed
Speaker 1: with Tammy Hembro's love life because we met her as
Speaker 1: a young pregnant woman who had a partner, this doting
Speaker 1: partner he was painted online to be, and suddenly there
Speaker 1: were cracks in this perfect image. Yeah, and whilst we
Speaker 1: have touched on the fact that Tammy has been very
Speaker 1: respectful and a great co parent in the years to come,
Speaker 1: when things were fresh after this breakup, there was a
Speaker 1: lot of animosity between the pair and there was a
Speaker 1: bit of slinging publicly online, which we will get into
Speaker 1: in next week's episode, because that is where we are
Speaker 1: going to.
Speaker 2: Leave you today.
Speaker 1: Next time we will be diving deep into the aftermath
Speaker 1: of Tammy and Reese's breakup. While the couple vowed to
Speaker 1: remain civil for their children, it didn't take long for
Speaker 1: a slinging match to erupt as new partners entered the picture,
Speaker 1: and in the midst of it all, Tammy Hembro made
Speaker 1: Internet national headlines for all the wrong reasons. Thank you
Speaker 1: again for listening to Outspoken. This podcast was recorded on
Speaker 1: the traditional land of the Ghana people of the Adelaide Plains.
Speaker 1: We pay respect to elders past and present