Over the past week alone, Kent “Smallzy” Small has interviewed Margot Robbie, Greta Gerwig, America Ferrera, Issa Rae, Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, Jason Derulo, Kelly Clarkson and Chris Hemsworth to name a few.
While it may look like the celeb lineup for a Vanity Fair Oscars After Party or the People’s Choice Awards, it’s just another week for Smallzy who has been on our airwaves as an entertainment radio broadcaster for over two decades.
Since June 26, he’s been warming up winter breakfast across the Nova Network, giving listeners access to the world’s biggest stars, music and entertainment news. However, for the “radio nerd”, chatting with A-Listers is just as exhilarating as when he first started.
“I try to not lose touch with the fact that they’re cool celebrities and younger me would have just been so excited,” Smallzy said on Mediaweek and Chattr’s podcast, The Entertainment Hotline. “I would have just thought that this was everything I had dreamed about and more.”
At the time of recording, the broadcaster had just returned from a media call with the stars of the Barbie movie, whom he would then host, alongside Nova’s Mel Tracina, at the Sydney premiere of the film.
“It was in that moment, I was like, ‘You know what? Nope, this is still exciting.’ You get a kick out of it. I still enjoy it. And I still go ‘Oh, yeah. Well, this is a job. This is awesome. Really love this.'”
Smallzy and Mel Tracina with the cast and director of Barbie. Instagram
No matter who he is chatting to, Smallzy has a tried and tested way of chatting with the faces we know and love.
“I just approach it as in like, these people are just, they’re normal,” he said, adding that he just likes “to have conversations with people”.
“I also like to ask questions that are inane. Like with Margot Robbie… ‘What’s your flaw?’ We all have a flaw, right? I can’t see what it is. Like, ‘Do you snore?’… she must do something. So I’m going to spend my time trying to find out what her flaw is just so I know that she’s not a God amongst us, but just a normal person who happens to be a movie star as well.”
Margot Robbie. Instagram
Smallzy admits to interviewing his family as a kid with a fake microphone
In October, Smallzy will celebrate 20 years at the Nova Network and as part of this milestone, his night show, Smallzy’s Surgery, has celebrated 78 number-one Radio Survey spots.
For the host, radio is what he “always wanted to do”. Oh, and be a talk show host.
“Always my entire life, I’ve wanted to do [radio],” he said. “I also want to host a talk show at some stage. I grew up in the 90s on Ricki Lake, Oprah Winfrey, Phil Donahue, Jerry Springer and even Stan Zemanek on Beauty and the Beast. I remember vividly just walking around with a fake microphone at home and just interviewing my family members.”
As for radio, he grew up listening to the likes of Ugly Phil O’Neil.
“I grew up listening, having a radio in the bedroom, listening to the radio, getting a window into the world outside of your own existence, hearing people talking about breakfast, playing songs. I loved capturing the old sweepers and the IDs between the songs. I made my mixtape about the radio station because I was a deadset geek.”
Nova Network
The other side of being a radio host
While most days, Smallzy is living the dream, there is another side to the industry that he insists remains difficult, feedback, but he has a distinct mindset to help tackle it.
“Everyone gets feedback,” he said. “[But] There’s a different type of feedback when you work in a creative environment because when you go to uni for three years to learn how a spreadsheet operates, or to do a business proposal, the feedback you get is, this business case doesn’t stack up, we need to go back and work on it to make the numbers.
“When you work in a creative field and you get feedback, there is no manual for how I must talk in the morning, or at night. When someone gives you feedback, what you’re hearing as a person is someone saying, ‘I don’t like who you are or what you’ve decided to say today.’ But, it’s not a personal attack, because I get it and I understand it.”
Listen to the full interview with Kent “Smallzy” Smalls on The Entertainment Hotline.
On Air With Smallzy will be heard from 6 am to 9 am in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and
Adelaide, from Monday 26 June to Friday 7 July, on the Nova Network.