After years of producing It’s A Lot with Abbie Chatfield, Lem Zakharia has stepped out from behind the mic to tell her own story.
The former-EP, who has just launched talent management and consulting company Bedou, is releasing Twice Displaced, a deeply personal, four-part narrative series, described as a “collective memoir.”
Blending her own voice with intimate conversations featuring friends, family, ex-girlfriends, and even her current partner’s ex-boyfriend, the series explores identity, queerness, heartbreak, and what it means to be “twice displaced.”
Kayla Jade, who is represented by Lem Zakharia’s agency, Bedou, Lem Zakharia and Abbie Chatfield.
The production features cinematic soundscapes and original music, weaving together personal storytelling with high production values. For Zakharia, the project marks both a creative and professional shift, from shaping other people’s stories to telling her own.
“Twice Displaced isn’t just my story,” she said. “It’s the story of the people and places that have shaped me, and I wanted to create something that felt as expansive and layered as those experiences.”
“My hope is to humanise Arab voices starting with mine,” says Zakharia. “I want people to understand that the experience of displacement is so unique to every person that goes through it.
“I tried to do that by blending entertainment, original soundscapes, and intense vulnerability. People need to hear more of our stories in an accessible way.”
Zakharia’s journey spans her family’s Palestinian origins and her experience as a queer asylum seeker, taking listeners from her childhood in Jordan through her rise as a breakfast radio host and minor celebrity, to a secret relationship that nearly led to her arrest.
She is now living with her partner, building a blended family in suburban Sydney.