Joe Aston knew he needed a heavyweight for the first episode of Rampart Talks.
Launching anything new in media is a gamble, and launching a new interview franchise is even harder. You need a name that cuts through. So Aston went straight to the most complicated, compelling name in his contacts list: James Packer.
“Well, look, I’ve been friends with James for 10 years, so I haven’t written about him much because that’s always been a bit complicated,” he tells Mediaweek.
“But once I decided I was going to give a podcast a try, he was such an obvious choice of subject because he’s so compelling and interesting, and he has given some big interviews in the last three or four years. But I felt like I just knew I could get him to talk more about business in a way that he hasn’t before. And that turned out to be true.”
What follows in the debut episode is a conversation that sprawls across Packer’s world: Crown, the Murdochs, Xi Jinping, Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, mental health, and his profound dislike of former Victorian Premier Dan Andrews. It is as fiery as it is personal.
‘I was worried’
Despite the decade-long friendship, Aston admits he felt a twinge of nerves heading in.
“Yeah, a little bit,” he said.
“To be honest, I was worried he would just blame everyone else and not take responsibility, and then that would put me in a position where I’d really have to go in quite hard about that. But I was lucky that he just said no, and he took responsibility for all those mistakes.”
Packer does exactly that.
In the episode, he reflects on his own performance with surprising bluntness: “I give myself about a five out of 10 in business. If I’m being honest, that’s what I am. When my dad died, I expected that I was going to be an eight or a nine out of 10.”
He catalogues the wins and losses with the same matter-of-fact tone: “I sold Channel Nine well, and I sold ACP well, I arguably sold Foxtel and Fox Sports well, I arguably sold Crown well, to Blackstone.”
But then comes the kicker: “I sold my 10 percent of realestate.com very badly.”
And when asked about Donald Trump? Packer deadpans: “He’s been nothing but nice to me. He liked my father.”
Aston knew the stakes, and prepped like hell
Aston insists he’s still learning the craft. “I’m an amateur at this. I’m no Sarah Ferguson. But look, I think I got him on a really good day.”
To get there, he leaned heavily on producer Eliza Harvey.
“She’s an amazing TV producer. She was EP of Q&A, and she’s been a producer at 7.30 and all sorts of ABC programs. I’m really lucky to have gone through that process with her because I really am a writer, not a TV interviewer, and it’s a very different skill. So I’m just learning it on the job.”
Yet the rapport between Aston and Packer gave the interview its remarkable looseness.
“Look, I’ve spent a lot of time with James, and it’s never boring, even if you’re sitting around and nothing’s happening, you’re watching television. It’s never boring because there’s always some sort of amazing historical factoid or war story or perspective that comes out.”
Wrapping it up
For two men with a history of high-flying social moments, the end of the interview was almost anticlimactic.
“Neither of us drink, so no, we did not end the interview with a whisky. We might have in the past and probably had too many whiskies, but no, we didn’t do that,” Aston laughed.
“It was pretty non-dramatic. We went downstairs and had lunch.”
Lunch – not whisky – and a landmark interview: an unexpectedly fitting beginning for Rampart Talks, a series built on access, honesty and the kind of candour that only arrives when friendship meets preparation at the exact right moment.