Television presenter Kanoa Lloyd talks to Jane Phare about motherhood, body image and why she’s delighted her toddler daughter knows the Māori word for moon.
The comfy wool slippers from Hannahs pretty much set the scene for Kanoa Lloyd’s photo shoot in NZME’s studio. There’s not a Louboutin or glittery dress in sight for this Mother’s Day special.
Instead Lloyd, co-presenter of Three’s prime time show The Project, wants to go minimal – no layers of look-your-best-for-the-camera makeup, no hair stylist and no one choosing her clothes. She’s grabbed favourites from her home wardrobe – loose shirts, wide pants, bike shorts. It means there’s no sucking in the tummy.
There are hoots of laughter from the women in the studio when she mentions that. Someone mutters how “brave” Lloyd is, going au naturel. And then another says: “Isn’t it wrong that social conditioning makes us think it’s brave and not normal.”
The Reset photo shoot, wearing “Mum clothes”, reminds Lloyd of how far she’s come compared to a promo shoot when she first joined The Project.
“I was probably a size 10 and I was sitting there thinking (in a breathy, anxious voice) ‘oh I’ve got to suck it in’ and ‘I’ve got to make sure my chin doesn’t look too big’. And I was tiny, and now I’m, like, a size 16. I’ve had enough of holding my tummy in.”
So here she is, aged 36, without makeup, a size 16, and sick of sucking it in. So suck it up, is Lloyd’s message, this is who she is.
It was on a midweek show of The Project earlier this year that she started taking her makeup off on air. By the end of the ad break she appeared with a wiped-clean face, sitting alongside co-hosts Jesse Mulligan and Jeremy Corbett, who at that stage were wearing more makeup than she was.
The Project team had been talking to social media influencer Jess Quinn about the dangers of hyper-realistic filters like “Bold Glamour” which instantly alters so-called imperfections. Suddenly everyday faces have flawless skin, fuller lips, whiter teeth and darker eyes.
Lloyd thought it would be hypocritical to sit there wearing a full face of professional makeup, so she got out her makeup wipes. The response from viewers was huge. One woman in Ukraine promoted the clip on her Instagram feed.
“I couldn’t understand what she was saying but she was showing all these pictures of me and what had happened.”
Women get so many messages, Lloyd says: what’s okay and what’s not. “Sometimes the things you are told are okay, and the things that feel good and feel normal are quite different.”
Discovering makeup is a totally normal part of a girl’s experience, she says. Where it goes wrong is when young women don’t understand that it’s a tool, the icing on the top.
“You need to build up the real you before the icing goes on top, whether you’re 13 or 30. I think that’s why young women are experiencing extremely high rates of anxiety and depression, and bad self-image, because the balance is not quite right.”
At work, Lloyd appreciates the glam trappings that go with her role but she doesn’t need them to feel good about herself away from work. It’s a lesson she wants to pass on to her 21-month-old daughter Nikau, conscious role modelling that helps Lloyd reaffirm those messages to herself.
“I don’t think what I look like or what size I am is the most important thing about me.”
Comfortable in her own skin, Lloyd seems to have cracked it. She talks with her trademark wild gesticulations – she once accidentally whacked co-host Mulligan live on air – and laughs a lot. These days she lives with a “who cares?” attitude. But she wasn’t always so indifferent to personal remarks.
As a young weather presenter for Three in 2014, Lloyd thought she’d mix things up a little and drop in the odd te reo Māori word. (She’s “central Otago farmers” on her mother’s side, Māori - Ngati Porou and Tuhoe – on her father’s).
So she’d sometimes say Waipounamu instead of South Island, or use both Hamilton and its Māori name Kirikiriroa. Looking back, she says, it wasn’t meant to be political, rather a tool to help her do her job.
But Lloyd started seeing feedback on social media - “we all speak English in this country”- or she’d open Three’s weather email to find a viewer remarking, “I don’t understand what you say when you say Aotearoa.”
“It was just stupid but it really hurt me, not my feelings, but because it was about Māori and it was about my language it hurt in a massive way.
“It’s the same s**t that people say today but at the time it loomed so large for me.”
So, before she learned to ignore it, she called people out in a tweet, revealing that people were angry at her for using te reo words. Shortly afterwards her Mediaworks boss Mark Jennings called Lloyd into his office.
“I thought ‘oh God, oh God, oh God’. I really thought I’d done something terrible.”
Instead Jennings apologised, saying he was sorry she’d been subjected to the hurtful comments. Roll on nine years and Lloyd reflects on how far New Zealand/Aotearoa has come.
“The amount of Māori in broadcasting now, it’s so inspiring. I’m learning every time I turn on the radio or the TV.”
Growing up in Dunedin after her parents separated when she was 4, Lloyd isn’t fluent in the language but knows enough to begin teaching Nikau. Her daughter will point to the moon and say “see the marama Māmā.” Lloyd loves that; two te reo words in one sentence.
The road to ‘Toko’
Shortly after the floods and Cyclone Gabrielle, Lloyd found herself close to her roots after flying into Gisborne when communications were still down.
The road to “Toko” - Tokomaru Bay, near where she was born in Ruatoria - was still blocked; so was access to her whānau. But she had a job to do, so emotions had to be set aside.
“It was such a mixture of feelings when you land on your whenua and parts of it are broken, and people are broken. It’s a really hard feeling to quantify.”
Lloyd spent her first few years living a nomad lifestyle, moving around with her parents. At one stage they lived with potter Barry Brickell while her parents helped with his now famous Driving Creek Railway in Coromandel. She treasures a couple of Barry Brickell plates from that era.
The move to Dunedin with her mother and sister brought stability. Now Lloyd’s closest family are in Auckland. Her sister lives in the city and her mother, drawn by the lure of a granddaughter, moved up from the South Island earlier this year.
Husband Mikee Carpinter’s parents also live in Auckland and the Easter break was spent hanging out with Carpinter’s brother, partner and their two children at Mangawhai. Lloyd laughs at how having a toddler changes the meaning of a dream holiday setting.
“I definitely do care a lot more about flat grass. "
And she’s noticed other priorities have changed with motherhood. It’s no longer important to go to every gig or dinner party.
“I still love those things and I love my friends. It’s just that if I can’t do those things I don’t think the world’s going to end.”
She and Carpinter, a producer and colour grader, agreed early on that they wanted to play an equal role in parenting and both wanted to continue with their careers.
“He’s just the best, best teammate. It means that not too much has had to change.”
When Nikau was a baby they shared the feeding during the night, and now take turns to get up early to let the other have some extra sleep.
“It’s a bit of a roll of the dice (with wake times). Are you going to get a 5am start or a 7am start?”
Their daughter is not yet 2 but Lloyd is already thinking about what’s ahead in the pre-teen and teenage years.
“I haven’t thought about what I’m not going to let her do, but I do think about the foundation I want to help her build. Talk to her about how smart she is and how strong she is.”
Nikau “reads” books, saying words she remembers from the story and gabbling away to make up the rest, something that “makes my heart so happy”, Lloyd says. Her thinking is that if she keeps giving her daughter positive feedback about things she achieves for herself, Nikau will trust those things that her mum loves.
“Not just the cool dress or ‘you’re so beautiful’, just giving her a bit more than that, a bit nourishing.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with a lovely dress, Lloyd says with a grin. Already Nikau calls “Party dress, party dress?” when she hears there’s an outing to a family birthday.
“And that’s awesome. It’s the same feeling I have. I like to feel special.”
Lloyd’s the first to admit she loves clothes and struggles to keep her wardrobe under control. She does “that thing”, she laughs: “If I just buy this coat then my wardrobe and my life will be complete.”
And every night on The Project she gets to wear something new and sassy, probably brighter than her more muted “Mum clothes”, but fun.
In a great-stylists-think-alike moment, Lloyd appeared last month wearing a yellow sunflower Veronika Maine blouse while, over on TVNZ1, Seven Sharp host Hilary Barry was wearing the same top. The Project team heard about the fashion clash while on air and Lloyd says they laughed.
“Jeremy (Corbett) texted Hilary a picture of me saying ‘twins’.”
Lloyd makes no apology for the mix of laughter, (light) entertainment and more serious news that she’s part of on the show; she thinks the mixture reflects Kiwis themselves – the serious accountant who might well have a Lego collection. It is, she says, okay to click on the Kardashians.
“I think that’s what our show is about, it’s about that balance of the two things. I think that’s what I’m like as a person. I care about social issues, improving our society rather than making it worse, but I don’t think the existence of the Kardashians necessarily makes anything worse for anybody. I think it’s important as a human but also a feminist to understand that.”