Twenty-one years ago, Suzanne Paul was a spritely 46-year-old with the kind of get-go attitude which meant she was happy to submit to one of the first series of Celebrity Treasure Island.
“In those early series, they were quite ruthless with us,” says Suzanne.
She was on a tropical island in 2003 with Matthew Ridge, Marc Ellis, Jason Gunn, Louise Wallace and Nicky Watson.
“They dropped us on the island and told us to build a camp,” she recalls. “What did Louise Wallace and I know about building a camp? We had no idea. We couldn’t light a fire, we had no food, so straight off the bat we were cold, hungry, wet, and then there was a cyclone and everything blew away and they had to rescue us!”
Suzanne remembers the producers told her that if she won a challenge, they would give her a chicken.
“I’m thinking KFC and I won the challenge, which nearly bloody killed me, and they gave me this live chicken. I couldn’t do anything with it. We built a pen and kept it as a pet. I couldn’t kill that chicken.”
But the hardest part was sleeping, which she couldn’t do on the island. But wait, there’s more… Suzanne is back and starring in the next series of TVNZ’s Celebrity Treasure Island.
At 67, there’s been a lot of water under the bridge since the chicken-keeping cyclone days.
“The first thing I thought about when they asked me to do it was that we slept on sand in 2003 and I couldn’t get any sleep, so will this be the same?
“I like everything nice when I’m in bed. Even in a hotel, I can’t wait to get back to my own bed. So I was worried, ‘Where are we going to be sleeping? How am I going to sleep? What if I don’t sleep? I’m going to be exhausted.’ And then, of course, I was also worried about, you know, the facilities,” she laughs.
But despite those concerns Suzanne said yes.
“I’m of the opinion that you just say yes to everything and then worry later how you are actually going to do it,” she says.
“Otherwise, if you think about things, your brain will always try and put you off. I remember doing Dancing with the Stars and my brain kept going, ‘But what if you’re hopeless? What if you fall down the steps and what if Stefano [Olivieri] drops you on your head?’ And then I have a serious word with myself and say, ‘But what if I’m really good at it? What if I enjoy it? And what if I win?’ And I did!”
Suzanne’s pals, however, tried to warn her off doing Celebrity Treasure Island.
“I’ve only told a couple of my close friends and they were all the same, saying, ‘You’re not going on there. What on earth is possessing you to do that? You’re going to cause yourself a mischief, put your back out or break something,’” tells Suzanne.
The new series of Celebrity Treasure Island was shot in March. Suzanne made it back safely to the comfort of her bed – and her husband Patrick Kuhtze, 61.
“I did worry about Patrick because I thought it’s just as bad for those that you leave behind,” she reflects. “They’ve no idea what you’re doing or if you’re okay or when you’re coming back. He could have been waking up every morning, thinking, ‘I wonder if she’s coming back today?’”
Suzanne also left to shoot the series knowing that she had just been diagnosed with vertigo, which she has been dealing with for the past year.
“I do Zumba, I have a personal trainer and I do Pilates, so I thought I was as fit as I can be for an arthritic, 67-year-old, but then there was the vertigo,” she explains. “It’s driving me mad at the minute and I had it last year for a couple of weeks. You just turn over in bed and the whole room spins round, and you feel sick like you’ve had too many Pinot Gris. I feel sick and dizzy most of the time.”
Suzanne is receiving treatment, but she was worried the vertigo would come back while she was on Celebrity Treasure Island.
“I had it before I went and I’ve had it since I came back, and I did think every day while I was on the show, ‘Oh, please, God, don’t let me get that.’”
Suzanne has also recently been diagnosed with dyscalculia, which is like dyslexia but instead of having a problem with words, you struggle with numbers.
“I’ve tried to keep it a secret for so many years,” she confides. “I never talked about it. I just found ways to deal with it.”
Suzanne says she couldn’t do maths at school and teachers were always telling her off.
“They would call me lazy and stupid, put me in detention, give me the cane and in the end, I stopped going to maths classes, so they expelled me when I was 15,” she says. “I’ve tried to cope all these years. That’s why I’ve always got into a mess financially. I let other people look after my finances and my bank accounts.”
She says that if she was asked to add two numbers, she just couldn’t do it and it’s also hard to understand time. Simple things like travelling to Sydney meant she needed to write down the time difference and the flight numbers. She’s have to keep them near to refer to because she’d never remember them.
“You can show me the numbers and I can see them, but then they just fly out of my brain,” she says.
“I’ve always felt really stupid. But then I realised, I’m successful at this and successful at that, so I’m not stupid. I just can’t do numbers. So then I researched it and went for some tests, and realised that it’s dyscalculia. I can remember scripts from products that I’ve sold 20 years ago, but if you ask me how much tax I paid last week, I’d have no idea.”
Suzanne says people ask her how she lost all her money and she tells them that she let other people look after it.
“I’d tell them to invest it or put it in the bank and then at the end of the year, they tell me I’ve got no money left!”
Her husband Patrick now handles her taxes, but it’s not easy.
“He’ll be going through the books and ask me what I spent $49 on, and I’d fly into a panic. I just don’t know.”
Now that Suzanne has a diagnosis of dyscalculia, she finally feels able to talk about it in the hope that it might help others, like her, who’ve had to cope with it for years.
Despite these issues, Suzanne is very happy in her new home at Red Beach, which has stunning views of the ocean from her deck, and the beach is a two-minute walk away.
“We take our dog Matty along the beach for his walks, and the Surf Life Saving club is there, so we can have a meal and if we want to walk further, there’s Orewa Beach. I can’t believe how happy I am in this house. It’s a dream.”
She and Patrick keep busy, with Suzanne doing keynote speaking roles and developing a social media following, particularly on TikTok. Patrick, meanwhile, is Sam the Butcher on the New World commercials. He also has a role in the next season of the comedy Not Even, which screens on Neon.
As the launch of Celebrity Treasure Island approaches, Suzanne admits to feeling a little anxious as she can no longer remember much about it.
“When I got back, I didn’t sleep for three weeks. I kept replaying in my head what I had done and said. I kept wishing I had done and said it better,” she laughs.
She also felt the best she had in years.
“As soon as I got home, Patrick said he could see the difference in me,” she enthuses. “It felt like somebody had plugged me back in, and whoosh, the energy and my vitality were back. I felt I’d got a new lease of life. And I was so proud of myself.”
Suzanne says that at her age, she’s not sure how many more exciting opportunities will be out there, so she likes to do things that will scare the hell out of her.
“I really feel like I’m getting back out there and everything I do, I always think, ‘You never know where this is going to lead.’ You never know who you’re going to meet or what will be the outcome. I’m hoping Celebrity Treasure Island will remind people of me and who I am. Also that people making TV shows will think, ‘Oh, yeah, I’ve forgotten about her’ and I might get something from it. That would be wonderful.”
Recently, Suzanne was about to do a keynote speech on motivation. She was standing behind the curtain and heard someone in the audience say, “Suzanne Paul? I thought she was dead?”
“I got on the stage and I said, ‘As you can see, I’m not dead. I’m very much alive!’” she chuckles. “I’ve been in this country since 1991, so I think it’s just because I’ve been around for so long.”
Celebrity Treasure Island screens on Monday, September 9 at 7.30pm on TVNZ 2 and TVNZ+.
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