Star of Gogglebox, I’m A Celebrity, and The Bachelorette, Angie Kent is diving into the world of podcasting. This week she launched her podcast, Angie Tries It, on the Nova Podcast Network.
Released each Tuesday, Kent will brave a series of alternative wellness therapies in a show being branded as “goop debunked”. The types of treatment will include exposure therapy, laughter yoga, past life regression, and BDSM.
Mediaweek spoke to Kent about how the podcast came to be, working without visuals, and what the future holds.
Starting out
Kent says that when Nova came to her with the idea for the podcast, she was instantly on board.
“We were in talks about me doing a podcast, and they knew that I’m always up for… well, not anything, but I love a therapy sesh, I love experiencing new things, and I can talk. So they were like ‘well, why don’t we put this together and we can call it Angie Tries It, and you can go around and do everything you love and talk about it’. I was like ‘Best job ever. Sign me up’.”
When it comes to trying some of the more uncomfortable therapies, Kent says that she doesn’t let fear hold her back.
“I feel like I’m one of those people that I’m pretty much scared of everything, every single day of my life. I’m so used to living like that that it’s made me not scared anymore, it’s weird. I’m petrified of a lot of things, and it’s never stopped me from doing it. When it comes to stuff like therapies, it is very invasive and you have to be very vulnerable, so it can be quite uncomfortable and confronting at times.
“I just thought well, I love helping people, I love entertaining people, and I love therapies and getting to know what can make me better or what I don’t like. So I was like ‘this is the best, it has my name all over it’.”
Trying it
Kent says that a lot of thought went into choosing which therapies to tackle.
“We had a schedule and we asked ‘what would I do’ and ‘what wouldn’t I do’, and we have this document of ‘have I done this before? If so, would I do it again? Is it something that I would want to share with the audience?’. So I went through the list, did a little bit of research on the therapies – I’d already done some of them, too – and I was like ‘I would love for people to know about this therapy’.
“Then I’d just let the team organise it, and once we get in there I just go off my gut in terms of the questions I want to ask. The production team is amazing, so they’ll jump in if I’ve forgotten something.”
The world of audio
After working on multiple TV shows, the world of audio was a new experience for Kent. She says that working without visuals wasn’t an issue due to Nova’s podcast editing team.
“Nova have the best editing team, they’ve just picked out all the great bits. Cause we could go out and do these therapies for hours, people don’t want to sit and listen to me going into hypnosis or the before parts of me going to face my fear in exposure therapy. So they’ve edited down the best parts where it’s informative but also quite funny, but also really serious too.
“It’s worked out really well, you don’t really need the visuals – but I’m sure they’ll chuck visuals on social media and I’ll be like ‘oh great, that’s right, that happened’.”
Future projects
As well as Angie Tries It, Kent has an acting debut on the horizon. Her main project for the year though has been closer to home.
“In terms of projects work wise, I have my movie coming out in September, but other than that I just bought my first home. I’m up on a mountain now, so I’m just getting used to mountain life and being a single gal homeowner in the middle of nowhere. So that’s been my main project over the last couple of months.”
Listen to Angie Tries It here.