Cato told Paula Bennett on her NZ Herald podcast, Ask Me Anything, that it felt like a real rejection, and while she tried to put on a brave face, it was difficult to get through her grief.
“I have been known to swear,” she joked.
“But it was loud, it was [shouting], and tears, and I went to bed and put the covers over my head.
“Because beyond it being a television programme, it was my production company that was making Suzy’s World. So beyond it being, ‘oh no, we don’t want that programme any more, what else have you got?’, it was, ‘we don’t want your television programme any more, but we don’t want you either, because you’re not working, you don’t fit the mould any more’. So that was a real kick in the guts.”
But the setback hasn’t stopped Cato from being a beloved figure. Working across a variety of mediums and projects, her mix of education and entertainment has seen her appeal to generations of young Kiwis.
She was recently honoured for her career, being made an Officer of the NZ Order of Merit (ONZM) on the 2025 King’s Birthday Honours list.
Cato told Bennett that it was out of the blue to receive it, but it was an incredible honour.
“Look, people have often said, ‘Dame Suzy, national treasure’, and all those sorts of things, but you know what you have achieved so far, and you think that something like that is for much later in life at the end of your career, and you know how much more you still want to do, so I wasn’t expecting it.”
Cato, who’s just turned 57, is showing no sign of slowing down, with multiple projects still on the go. She has started producing podcasts as well as radio shows, and recently scored some wins at the Radio and Podcast Awards.
She still remembers the early days of her career well. Cato recalls receiving letters during her first TV job from children who were dealing with violence in their lives and seeking help.
They shook her so much she tried to resign from her job, because she was only in her early 20s and had signed up for the job to entertain people and be silly. But the letters allowed her and the show to address those issues and help children.
However, she’s had her own challenges and experiences to overcome in her life.
One thing Cato has had to come to terms with is that she has never met her biological father.
“My grandmother came across to Australia to get Mum and I. There was a telephone call saying, ‘something’s happened today, I need you to know that you are now grandparents’, and so my nana flew across. It was the first time she’d ever flown.
“So I don’t know who my biological father is.
“But the lovely story is that my Mum and my adopted Dad ... would have caught the same bus off to school or work from Hamilton, but never knew [the other] existed until Mum and I went to Wellington to stay with her auntie, and Dave actually started babysitting me while Mum went out.”
Cato said it wasn’t until she was about 10 and they were going to Australia that she realised her adopted father wasn’t her birth father.
“I went, ‘I’m born in Australia, Mum’s been to Australia, but Dad hasn’t’, so I’d heard about the birds and the bees and put two and two together and something wasn’t buzzing right.”
She said she was always treated well though, and treats her adopted father as her real father.
And while it happened earlier than her mother would have liked, Cato said it was something that was always going to come up eventually.
“The naivety and the innocence of childhood, you want that to last or as long as possible in so many ways, and quite possibly she was hoping that it would last a bit longer.“
Listen to the full episode for more from Suzy Cato on her varied career and what she has learned over the decades about positivity.
You can catch Suzy on RNZ’s Suzy and Friends podcast every week.
Ask Me Anything is an NZ Herald podcast hosted by former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett. New episodes are available every Sunday.
You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
