From track to radio to comedy - Em Rusciano is the accidential star

Flamboyant and feisty as she might be, Em Rusciano feels like a fraud. After an injury halted her promising track career, the young mother fell into showbiz via Australian Idol.

"The only thing I've really been good at is training and athletics," she explains. "Everything else has been bluff and luck. I've worked my a--- off too, but . . . I constantly feel that someone's gonna bust me for being a massive fraud. That hangs over me."

The mother of two has a motto when faced with an offer that takes her out of her comfort zone -- accept the challenge when you want to say no. It's held her in good stead in landing gigs in radio, TV and on the stage.

Her latest mission? Embarking on her first comedy show at this month's Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

But Rusciano's life hasn't always had a punchline. She's battled depression on and off since she was 17 and was also hit hard by the 2008 suicide death of her radio chum Richard Marsland.

"He was the most beautiful human being,'' she says. "That was the kicker for me to get on top of my depression... I go to therapy once a week and will for the rest of my life."

Last year, Rusciano, 34, separated from her husband of five years, fitness specialist Scott Barrow, the father of her two daughters. She wrote of the split online in February: "I hurt. Music hurts. Life hurts. My brain hurts. In short, I am broken . . . It's truly no one's fault and I still love my husband, but we bring out the very worst in each other."

She remains dedicated to her girls, Marchella, 11, and Odette, 6. She says her MO, the reason she gets out of bed in the morning, is her strong desire to help other women.

"The reason I do everything I do -- the writing, singing, the (comedy) show, the radio -- is the hope of making other women feel better about themselves . . . because I know what it's like to not want to get out of bed or to be in the foetal position in the bathroom at 2am worried you're failing. I get that.

"I want to inspire ladies who've forgotten who they are. I want them to come to my show and think, `If this woman who has no training in stage or singing or comedy can get up in a leotard and entertain me for an hour in her 30s, maybe I can go back to calisthenics or painting. That's the drive for me. And because I'm a show-off.''

Born in Greensborough on March 1, 1979, Rusciano grew up in Diamond Creek and Warrandyte in Melbourne's outer east and attended Eltham College. She bounced off the walls as a kid.

"I was overachieving, intense, good at sport, s--- at maths. I carried a book around with me because I had such a fast mind; reading was the only thing that shut my brain up. I was anxious, ambitious, but super shy. I haven't changed. The person I am today is who I was at five."

She began athletics at six, excelling in hurdles. She won her first national championship at 10 and was in the junior development squad being groomed to compete at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. But, by 16 her body wanted no more and she never made it to the Games.

"I was competing at a state aerobics championship. I'd been banned from sport other than athletics because it was too high risk. I snuck in some high kicks and tore my hamstring."

Rehab couldn't fix the injury, exacerbated by years of netball, soccer, Aussie rules, basketball, dancing and gymnastics on top of a gruelling training regimen.

"It was all driven by me,'' she's at pains to point out. "Mum and Dad were never overbearing. I then had some testing and it was found I had an aptitude for velodrome cycling so I got put in the state squad and competed. I got second in the Austral Wheel Race the second time I'd ever been on a track. I trained with Gary Neiwand and raced against Kathy Watt. Then I fell pregnant.''

Rusciano was 21, had been dating Barrow for only five months and living with him for a week when they learned the news. They'd met at the Victorian Institute of Sport where he had been her strength and flexibility coach.

"I found out I was pregnant on Valentine's Day 2001. It was horrific," she says. Her Italian-Catholic parents were not happy -- their eldest daughter was expecting a child out of wedlock to a bloke they'd met a handful of times.

"It was decided I wouldn't keep the baby. I made the appointment, but couldn't do it. I'm absolutely pro-choice, but couldn't do it. I was probably looking for a way out of training and the pressure.

"I made the decision to do it on my own, went home and broke up with Scott. He didn't know I'd kept the child. I ended up telling him a little while later. We were on and off during the pregnancy . . . but I needed him all in or nothing, and he decided he wanted to be part of it."

They welcomed Marchella in October 2001.

"The day she was born, everything was forgotten (by my parents)," Rusciano says. "They're amazing grandparents and so supportive. My life has never been the same since in the best possible way.

"All professional athletes are crazy . . . People wonder about Jana (Pittman) and Tamsyn (Manou, nee Lewis), who is one of my very best friends who I've known since I was six, but you become so pedantic -- you can't get injured, you can't get a cold, you have to watch what you eat -- so you become extremely focused on yourself.

"All of a sudden, you have another human to look after. It's the first time I've been in love with someone other than myself. It was so good for me, but I was a baby with a baby. It was such a steep learning curve.''

In 2004, Rusciano was studying interior design in Adelaide where Barrow was working for the Port Adelaide Football Club. She belted out George Michael's Careless Whisper at a footy club karaoke night and impressed, the team's WAGs encouraged her to audition for Australian Idol.

Rusciano grew up surrounded by music -- her dad, Vince, sang in a brass band that supported Sammy Davis Jr and Joe Cocker -- but she'd had no formal training.

"I was the last one to turn up (to Idol auditions) that day, and a producer spotted me, a slightly overweight Pink lookalike. I'd never sung in public, apart from a bit of school choir. The fact I had a child, too. I could see their eyes light up: Hello! Story!"

After singing for the producers, she was asked to return the next day in the same outfit to perform for the judges.
"I wasn't sure if I was the pathetic one or the good one . . . But I made it to Top 100 and they were saying, `You've got to arrange a song and get your harmonies.' I was like, `Huh?' I didn't even know how to hold a microphone."

Rusciano ended up ninth on the second series of Idol, which crowned Casey Donovan the winner and launched Anthony Callea and Ricki-Lee Coulter. She was booted out on a disco-themed episode when judge Ian "Dicko" Dickson said she looked like maligned politician Pauline Hanson "having a night at the bingo".

During media interviews the next day, Rusciano caught the attention of radio bosses. Nova and Austereo offered her jobs on the spot.

"Apparently, at that time there was a lack of mildly intelligent females in radio who could put together a succinct sentence,'' she deadpans. She accepted Austereo's pitch, working on breakfast radio in Adelaide with Anthony 'Lehmo' Lehmann before being sent to Perth to join the network's breakfast team.

In the west, she also appeared on Channel 10's The Project. "Like with radio, I had no experience. I'd never done telly except for Idol, but it was, `No, you'll be fine.' "

But in 2009, after four years in Perth, suffering post-natal depression following the birth of her second daughter Odette, and jack of the 3.45am starts, Rusciano packed in the gig.

"Breakfast radio hours are like water torture. I always felt jetlagged and angry. I also didn't want to drink my own urine any more, or set things on fire, or whatever the stunt was in breakfast radio at the time. I felt like I was numbing and dumbing people."

She began writing her blog -- "because it made me happy" -- sold her house and car, pulled her daughter out of private school and moved back in with her parents in Melbourne.

She filled in on The Circle before it was axed last year and has kept up work on The Project. Her commitments today also include MC and corporate hosting work as well as co-hosting FOX FM's weekday radio show Mamamia Today with comedian Dave Thornton. The nationally syndicated show is a spin-off of mamamia.com.au, for which she also writes.

Rusciano embarked on a one-woman Melbourne Cabaret Festival show called Em Rusciano -- The Musical! last year (earning a Green Room Award nomination) and has gone solo again, having made her MICF debut with Puberty Rhythm & Blues, about Marchella's move into adolescence.

"It's more about me than her -- how I want to make puberty a smooth transition for her. For me, it was horrific. I was a pale-skinned, hairy Italian girl with a mother who had no body hair. I found out about my period when I got it. These things I can prevent for Marchella."

Rusciano would love more kids. "I'd like to run with a pack of children. Scott didn't want more, but I do. I've got plenty of gay men to go to when the time comes."

Marchella is school captain, sings and plays piano, and is in a junior development squad for hurdles and jumps. Odette ``is a drag queen, who'll most probably be in showbiz in some capacity''.

"But I don't care what they do," Rusciano says. "They can be interpretative dancers and live with me 'til they're 60 if they want. I think there's too much pressure on kids to get amazing jobs."

Rusciano wrote a blog post last year about how she doesn't live for her kids. Statements such as, "I am Em. I enjoy Nutella, eating in the shower and Tina Fey. I own 32 pairs of leggings, over 200 pairs of shoes and collect owl figurines. I'm also a mother. In that order." and "My children are past the newborn/toddler stage and I no longer feel the need to be by their side 24/7,'' drew a mixed reaction.

"I'd be half the mother I am if I schlepped around in tracksuit pants and didn't do the things that kept me authentic," she says. "Too often I talk to women who say, `I used to dance or sing or paint or be a lawyer' and I say to them, `Well you still are. It's just buried a bit. Get out from behind the Tupperware, get a babysitter and reconnect with who you were.'

"Your kids will see you and go, `That's really rad. Mum's flexible and smart.' That's the strongest role model you can give them. My kids will name me over Gaga and Madonna because I am larger than life.

"I didn't change much when I had children. I'm an unconventional mother. My way isn't the right way, it's just worked for me.

"I never want to make another woman feel less. I wear bathers for undies a lot of the time and my kids sometimes have Weet-Bix for dinner."

Rusciano admits she's not everyone's cup of tea. She says she doesn't have a lot in common with the other school mums. Her loud cheering at February's Myer runway parade whenever models Kris Smith or Jennifer Hawkins took to the catwalk raised the ire of a Sydney gossip columnist: "Which female radio presenter . . . was rudely wolf-whistling throughout the Myer show? Was she just trying to get noticed? It's just not the done thing at a fashion show, doll," wrote Ros Reines.

It was clear to anyone who attended the parade that she was talking about Rusciano.
"I imagine I polarise people. That's OK. Gay men like me. I've got that market cornered. I think some women like me, but I'm confident I alienate people."

If the showbiz bubble ever bursts, Rusciano says she'd go back to interior design, though her ambition is to have her own talk show.

"I want a variety show where guests come out and talk about an experience and the song that went with that experience and the guests and I sing it. There'd be a live band and a tea boy. Or maybe I'd go into politics . . . but I don't know."

What kind of old lady will she be?

"So foul," she laughs. "I'm gonna wear turbans and kaftans and gold jewellery, exist on gin, swear a lot, and be generous and glamorous. I'm gonna live with gay men in a huge house on a hill, with dogs and a hot pool boy. I can't wait."

Puberty Rhythm & Blues runs until April 21 at the Forum Theatre