Real Housewives Of Melbourne’s Janet Roach: ‘I Became Terrified Of Bad Things Happening’
Don’t be fooled by the bragging and bravado, the reality TV star has been through some difficult times.
If you’re a reality TV fan, it’s likely you have encountered Janet Roach of The Real Housewives of Melbourne. She’s impossible to miss: hair so blonde it’s almost white, spray tan, pins often on display and a body-hugging dress at the ready.
On face value, it might be easy to dismiss the 63-year-old as a privileged woman who only cares about her taglines – her season five phrase is, “I don’t like trouble unless I’ve caused it.”
One wonders if it’s too jarring in a pandemic to watch women boast about yachts and give each other the middle finger (Janet did the latter in the teaser). But Janet appears to come to the screen unfiltered, and as well as showing off her material possessions she’s also prepared to share the difficult past that has shaped her.
The most traumatic thing happened 10 years ago, to her son, Jake, who was then 22. He was at a party when accelerant was thrown onto a campfire and exploded. Jake suffered burns to almost 70 per cent of his body and since then has had almost 50 operations and continues to have treatments, but with his recovery came a diminishing interest in the world around him. To help him, he and Janet started The Roach Foundation, which provides assistance to burns patients and their families.
Janet is an avid tea blender, and when Jake was tired from his multiple treatments, she urged him to try some of her blends. He noticed a difference in his energy, and so Raw Essentials Tea was formed, with a portion of sales going back to the foundation.
For Janet, it was life-changing as well. “I had been a property developer, in an industry that was male-dominated, and I struggled. Suddenly I was doing something I so believed in, and it was important because it [helped] fund the foundation.
“In a small way, having a little bit of a profile with Housewives gave me an opportunity to talk about the things I wanted to talk about.
“[The show is] just a joy for us; both my sons are in there with me every day, although I realised a few weeks ago that maybe they don’t need me anymore. I’ve always been Jake’s and Paul’s mother, so when I realised that, I went through a bit of a bad time.”
““I wasn’t sleeping. I was self-medicating. I was fronting up for Housewives but I was doing a lot of strange things.””
It’s that honesty that makes her a great reality TV show character and also allows people to forgive her when she goes a step too far. (She coined the nickname “Lydiot” for former castmate Lydia.) In this interview, she was also prepared to talk about her PTSD diagnosis, which came after Jake’s accident.
“I wasn’t sleeping. I was self-medicating. I was fronting up for Housewives but I was doing a lot of strange things. I became terrified of bad things happening because something I couldn’t believe in my wildest dreams could happen, happened.”
As a result, Janet says she started to prepare for the worst and became a kind of doomsday prepper. “I made an 18-bed vegetable garden. I worked out how much everybody [in my family] would eat over the year. When my children tried to throw out their clothes, I would stockpile them.”
Janet had a property in Red Hill, 90 kilometres south of Melbourne, and she decided the family could retreat there in case of a dire emergency. “I wouldn’t let [the petrol in] their cars go under half full; I’d say, ‘If anything happens, get in the car and come to Red Hill, and you don’t have to worry about food or clothes.’
“I used to bottle things out of the garden; I had two or three hundred bottles of food every season. It was really exhausting. I reckon I had enough rice in my laundry to feed China for a day. Meanwhile, I was doing a reality TV show.”
She ended up speaking to her “wonderful shrink” who asked her what exactly she was preparing for. “It was like a fog lifted off me. We talked about what I was actually fighting against; what were the things I thought might happen. We went down the list – pandemic, financial collapse, war, invasion – you name it, I was scared of it.
“We worked our way down the list [of what some doomsday preppers prepare for] and we got to zombie apocalypse. I thought, ‘I don’t even know what a zombie is. Hold on a minute, we’re not going to have a zombie apocalypse!’”
In the end, it was about changing her attitude, not the world. “It was a relief to realise I couldn’t stop bad things from happening, I couldn’t prepare for them. It let me off the hook. Now, I don’t worry about so many bad things happening, but I am very careful. I sold the place [in Red Hill] in 2019, and in 2020 the pandemic came.”
Back in the ring for this fifth Housewives season, which features four new cast members, she says, “At the end of every single season, [you think] you’re never coming back, but it’s like childbirth: you forget. Because it is fun. I became close to the original cast members; we jumped off the cliff together, so even though we had spats, we knew how to travel together and we couldn’t afford to hold a grudge, and nobody did. I miss them.”
The show has also marked a kind of second chapter for her. “I was 55 [in the first season] and I thought, ‘Why do they want an old duck like me?’ You get to 55, you’ve done a lot of things. My marriage had broken up and my son had been in a fire and I’d spent years looking after him. I thought, ‘very few people get the opportunity to do this.’ It’s been amazing for me.”
She also has a new partner. “I didn’t ever think I would partner up, and I am very fine on my own. I have great friends, and I’m not one of those women who feels like they have to have a partner. But third time’s a charm – I don’t think I’ll marry, but I think I’ve made a significantly better choice.”
He doesn’t watch the show – and she doesn’t watch any of the other Housewives franchises. “I’m not that into reality shows. My dad used to say, ‘I love you, but I don’t understand the show – it’s a terrible show!’”
The Real Housewives of Melbourne, season 5, Sundays at 8.30pm on Foxtel.