Beloved ABC star Tony Armstrong is this week’s Stellar magazine cover star – and in the accompanying interview, the recent Logie winner for Most Popular New Talent opens up about some of the more unusual attention he’s received in his rise to fame.
The 32-year-old AFL player and ABC NewsBreakfast presenter addressed one surprising rumor that’s sprung up about his personal life. No, Tony Armstrong is not secretly married.
“If I had a secret wife I’d been hiding all this time, do you think I’d tell you?” I have told Stellarwhile also opening up about whether he’d consider getting hitched in the future.
“It’s got to be someone pretty special and I suppose I’ve got to be in a space where I can also give them what they need… I don’t want anything. The only, you know, money worries I’ve got are, ‘Can I service my mortgage and live a life I want to?’
“Everything other than that, I think, is superfluous. I’m just trying to remind myself to enjoy the ride and not buy into things when they’re going well. And don’t buy into it completely when they aren’t.”
Armstrong also downplayed his recent Logies win for the coveted Graham Kennedy Award for Best New Talent.
“Nowhere on the Logie does it say that you’re actually good at your job. It’s for the most popular new talent. What that means is f***ing nothing, apart from a popular vote. I mean, it’s flattering … and I’m very smug to my friends about it – it’s how I finish every argument. But that’s it.”
Armstrong’s appearance at this year’s Logies made headlines for another reason, after he clapped back at a Twitter troll who accused him of “virtue signaling” for making an acknowledgment of country while he was on stage.
The Twitter user – who insisted it was time to “drop this nonsense” – copped a surprised reply from Armstrong, who quickly put him in his place: “Shut up bro,” he responded. “I’m a blackfulla and I am duty bound to respect the land I’m on.”
speaking to StellarArmstrong said it was a no-brainer for him to respond.
“To be honest with that stuff, I couldn’t give af**k what people think. I’m going to say what I think is right. I could never pretend to speak on behalf of all Indigenous people but I can talk about what I know to be right. I don’t always get it right… but I try not to ever be complicit.”
Armstrong batted away another rumor about himself in a recent interview with news.com.au, laughing off speculation that he could one day find love on TV on a show like TheBachelor.
“The more interested that people are in talking to me, the less I want to do in a public space,” he said with a laugh when asked about persistent bachelor rumours, adding that his “anxiety inducing” red carpet debut at the Logies was enough of a foray out of his comfort zone.
“I really didn’t enjoy the red carpet… going to events and stuff like that, it’s just not ever going to be me,” he said.
Truth about Tony’s OnlyFans
One wild rumor about Armstrong that turned out to be true: Yes, he did start an OnlyFans account last year (despite initially denying it was really him).
Armstrong was spotted in a verified account on the raunchy subscription-only platform.
At the time he denied was him, as news.com.au reported, but he’s since come clean that it was actually set up as a ploy to get fans to donate to The Royal Children’s Hospital Foundation, cooked up with the owners of lifestyle brand Skwosh Club, Jack Watts and Jack Turner.
“I’m actually still waiting to get paid from it,” he explained to news.com.au recently.
“I did it because I was sitting with a couple of mates, Jack Watts and Jack Turner, and they had a charity run of shorts, and we thought ‘wouldn’t it be funny if we did a troll thing and tricked people into donating money’.
“Once they got into the OnlyFans, they would realize a subscription was for this charity… It was just photos of me with cups of tea or with a book or something. We ended up getting quite a few subscriptions.”
Asked whether he had permission from the ABC to join the site for the three-week stint, he sheepishly responded that he “found out later that he was meant to.”
“I wouldn’t say I got in trouble… I had ‘a chat’,” he revealed.
Read the full interview with Tony Armstrong in this week’s Stellar, available free with the Sunday Telegraph and the Sunday Herald Sun.
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