Former star of The Block Amity Dry is working her way through the toughest year of her life after divorcing from her husband Phil Rankine.
The nation fell in love with Amity and Phil on the very first season on The Block back in 2003, and once again back in 2013 on The Block All Stars.
But after two decades together the pair split last year, shocking fans of the much-loved television couple.
“It was pretty hard, it was pretty awful,” Dry, 40, told news.com.au.
“I built my dream home and I’m no longer in that. I think divorce is really like a death in a lot of ways.
“It’s the death of who you were and the life that you know, and you have to rediscover who you are as a single person, and not being part of a couple.
“It’s not just the end of a relationship, it’s the end of everything. But I’m on the other side of it now and I’m really happy.
“I’m in such a good place and I’m excited about what’s coming next.”
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Dry has written a new cabaret show, Fortified, about her marriage breakup that is playing around the country now.
She met Phil when she was 19 and by 24 they were married.
They have two children; a son Jamieson, 13, and daughter Poppy Lucinda, 8.
So what happened between the couple that saw their marriage end?
“I will never talk publicly about all the reasons because I don’t think that matters,” Dry said.
“But I think people grow apart and change. Who you are at 19 and who you are at 40 are completely different and I think if you manage to grow in the same direction with somebody and still make each other happy, that is an amazing thing.
“But I think that’s also a hard thing to achieve.”
With their loving relationship and with wit and charm, Dry and Rankine fast became fan favourites on The Block when it premiered back in 2003.
They were the rock solid couple that bounced off each other, endearing themselves to viewers.
Hosted by Jamie Durie, the first series of The Block was a huge ratings smash, regularly averaging well over two millions viewers, which is unheard of these days.
Filmed just around the corner from Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach, the show and the contestants captured the attention of the nation similarly to what Married At First Sight did this year.
There were countless magazine covers and front-page news stories around the country.
The show was such a success Dry got a record deal at the end of it and had a top 10 single and album called The Lighthouse.
As well as Dry and Rankine, the other three couples Warren and Gavin, Adam and Fiona and Paul and Kylie became huge house hold names, plucked from obscurity in what were the early days of reality television.
“When we were filming we had no clue how big it was going to be,” Dry said, looking back.
“Nobody, even the producers, had a clue that it was going to be a big hit. I remember Jamie Durie telling us that this show could potentially change your lives … but we didn’t think it would.
“The first episode went to air and I spoke to the producer afterwards and he told us it debuted at I think 1.7 million viewers.
“That exceeded every dream they had.”
The fact she became famous overnight took a while to get used to for Dry, who had been chasing a career in music for years.
“I was a 24-year-old girl who was singing in piano bars and trying to get a record deal, and then I just accidentally ended up on this show that turned us into house hold names overnight, literally overnight,” she said.
“We were on the front cover of every newspaper and magazine around the country.
“I then had a top 10 album and was doing in store appearances where 5000 people would show up.
“Looking back it was like a dream, even at the time it was like a dream, because you’re exactly the same person that you always were before, but suddenly people are excited about you.
“That’s the really weird thing.”
However reality television fame can be very tough and fickle as Dry found out.
She only released one album before being dropped by her record company and the couple went back to everyday life in Adelaide.
“What I learned is that when it all ends, people stop being excited about you and you go back to the exact same person you were before, and that’s a really hard thing,” she said.
“It’s both amazing and brutal at the same time.
“I didn’t really know what my normal life was because I was so young. It was really hard because I launched my album and I was living my career dream that I had wanted and I had worked towards and I thought that was going to continue for a while.
“It was really hard when that ended and then the next show came on and then Australian Idol came on, and everyone was talking about that.
“People move on and then you feel a little bit like you’re a has been. It was amazing and really brutal and it took me a while to think about what I was going to do next.”
For Dry, that meant regrouping and rediscovering who she was out of that reality TV bubble.
“I’m a singer and I was always a singer, I was singing since I was 15,” she said.
“Everyone thinks you are gone but singing is something I still wanted to do for the rest of my career.
“I had to step back and take a little bit of time off. I had a baby and then I wrote a musical about motherhood, which ended up being incredibly successful. I’m really glad I had a career resurgence.”
She has learnt valuable lessons: Don’t worry what people think and don’t put all your eggs in one basket when it comes to thinking you will get a career in the media after appearing on a reality TV show.
“You get five minutes to ride the wave of reality TV, then it’s over,” she said.
“If you can go on the shows and keep that in perspective, it can be great.
“But if you start defining who you are by how other people see you, it’s just a recipe for disaster.”
Dry has some blunt advice for this year’s crop of reality stars including the Married At First Sight cast, who are riding the wave of public interest right now.
“I would say to people enjoy it while it lasts, but don’t think it’s going to last because it’s not,’” she said.
“Everybody wants to continue their media career and make the most of it, but there’s too many people coming out of reality television now to do that.
“Our industry is not big enough to have every person that goes on a reality TV show to then make a career out of it.”
The future is looking bright for Dry.
She will head to London this year where her musical, Mother, Wife & The Complicated Life, looks like being picked up. The musical is also in development in Sweden and potentially Italy.
Turning 40, getting divorced and new career opportunities, it’s been a huge couple of years for Dry but she has come though it all.
“I call it a midlife awakening, I think that sounds much better than a mid life crisis,” she said.
For more information about dates for Fortified around the country, go to www.amitydry.com
Luke Dennehy is a freelance entertainment journalist. Follow him @LukeDennehy
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