Jan Fran and Wil Anderson are joining forces again this year to take on fake news. The new season of their ABC series Question Everything returns on 28 September and will see the pair take a deeper look at our news headlines each week, dissecting media misinformation and exaggeration with a wicked sense of humour. Fran is excited about who and what they have in store.
“We’ve got a great range of comedians [coming on the show] from all over Australia,” she says. “I think one of the biggest differences between last season and this season is we don’t have to make an entire show in a lockdown. We got to do very normal things like being in a room together brainstorming, which feels novel.”
Question Everything is the latest gig in Fran’s decade-plus TV career, which began with SBS programs such as Insight and Dateline and included presenting The Feed with Marc Fennell for six years. A regular guest on Network Ten’s The Project, Fran has also presented podcasts such as The Briefing and The Pineapple Project and has a memoir, titled Of Middle Eastern Appearance, set for release later this year.
One item helps Fran organise all areas of her busy life: rubber bands. Here, she extols their virtues, as well as bravely outing herself as a (former) puffer jacket person.
What I’d save from my house in a fire
I would save my nan’s ring. She used to always wear this big, gold ring. It was one of her favourites and always on her finger. She very sadly passed away in 2020 and we had her jewellery passed down to myself and my sisters. I got one of the rings, and had it cleaned and resized.
You know how babies have safety blankets – something that makes them feel like things are OK when they clutch it? That’s how I feel about this ring: it’s my safety blanket. If I’ve ever taken it off and put it in the drawer but have to do something a bit anxiety-inducing – a job that’s been giving me a bit of grief, a task that I need to complete that is causing me trouble – I will go and put the ring on. I feel that it gives me the strength of my grandmother, who was an extraordinary woman.
My nan was very stoic. She never complained. One time she was gardening and she cut her foot with an axe. Why she was gardening with an axe, we’ll never know. But she didn’t tell anyone, she didn’t mention it, until someone spotted her hobbling around, saw the blood and had to rush her to hospital. And the whole time she was saying, “I’m fine. I’m fine! It’s just a small cut!”
That’s just the way she was built. Nothing was a problem. Nothing was a big deal. Everything was surmountable. You just get on with it. And that’s the power of the ring.
My most useful object
I have got a big bag of rubber bands that I buy from the supermarket, and I rubber band everything. If there’s an open packet of stuff in the cupboard, I will stick a rubber band on it. If there are some errant pieces of paper that are floating around, I will roll them up and put them in a rubber band. Anything that I need to put into a nice, neat little group so that I can feel like my life is organised will be rubber banded.
And when I open the kitchen drawer and there are no rubber bands, I get very anxious. I need to know that there are rubber bands around at all times.
The item I most regret losing
Believe it or not, a Kathmandu puffer jacket. I was travelling once and we had to stay in this hotel room – I mean, I don’t think you could even call it a hotel room, it was probably closer to a dungeon. It was the only place available to stay.
The pillows were completely unusable. There were definitely spiders inside of them. Terribly unclean, terrifying stuff. And so in order to sleep on the pillow, I wrapped the Kathmandu puffer around it. The next day I was so eager to get out of the hotel-slash-dungeon that I packed everything as quickly as I possibly could and raced down to the car. We were a few kilometres away before I realised that I had forgotten the puffer.
And every time the weather is not cold, but mildly blowing a gale, I always shake my fist at the sky and think goddammit, if only I had that Kathmandu puffer! But alas, it is gone. I could just get another one, but I don’t want to. That one was a gift and it felt like it was meant for me.
• The new season of Question Everything airs on the ABC from Wednesday 28 September
