[Australia's] Wild boy grows up on Cambodian trip

• By Ros Reines
• From: The Sunday Telegraph
• April 06, 2013

DON'T call Darren McMullen a bad boy. According to The Voice host, his reputation as a womanising, party animal was just down to clever marketing spin put about by MTV execs when he first rose to fame on edgy music show The Lair.

The Voice host Darren McMullen is set to ruffle feathers. The Sunday Telegraph

Really?

"I was in my early 20s and it was just like 'let's go crazy', but now I am 31 my priorities have changed," he insists.

Certainly it doesn't look good at first, especially when he mentions that he has just spent an entire flight from LA to Sydney throwing up - but it transpires it wasn't from too much partying, it was from the un-rock and roll reason of eating devilled eggs coupled with a lot of turbulence.

"It was the worst turbulence I've ever experienced. At one time it felt as though we had just dropped 100 feet and I thought, 'This is it, I'm meant to die in a plane crash'," he says.

After he landed, he went straight to a photographic studio in Alexandria so he could take part in a magazine shoot with his mum Ellison.

Scottish-born McMullen has flown his parents from their home in the south of France to stay with him in his Potts Point pad while he films The Voice.

So wild, late-night parties with his rumoured list of girlfriends are therefore no longer on his "to do" list.

Today he is relaxing in one of his favourite Darlinghurst cafes, Tigerbakers ("they do a traditional, full English breakfast"), and he has basically had me on Team McMullen ever since he mentioned that I look too young to have a 19-year-old son. What a guy.

He is even quite restrained when I ask him to set the record straight about his supposed love affair with The Voice judge Delta Goodrem.

"I don't know how to answer that question any differently than I already have," he says, taking a sip of his latte. "We're not seeing each other. It's as simple as that. If she was somehow on drugs and I could convince her to date me then, yeah, it might work," he laughs.

McMullen explains the two have been friends for six years and they found it difficult to maintain that friendship in the glare of so much speculation about a romance.

Today he looks very different from the polished, matinee idol image he presented as host of The Voice last season. His hair's long, framing his whiskered face, and he is wearing a checked shirt and jeans. He's more rock star than TV presenter.

McMullen has been on a life-affirming journey this year, which started last December when he travelled through India and Cambodia.

It wasn't quite his Eat, Pray, Love moment but it was suitably confronting and included hanging out in a Cambodian orphanage for children with HIV.

"I couldn't have been happier to be there because just before Christmas I was walking down Oxford Street in London and I was absolutely disgusted by how materialistic everyone had become."

Going to India first was a culture shock before he moved on to Cambodia, where the population has been decimated by the Khmer Rouge and AIDS, leaving a lot of HIV-positive orphans.

"Being there made me stand up and pay attention to what else is happening in the world," he says simply.

McMullen believes that there is a stigma attached to celebrities doing charity work.

"People are almost afraid in my industry that they will be accused of supporting charities just for publicity," he says.

"But if you had even a shred of decency in you and you went over there to promote yourself, hopefully it would slap some sense into you."

McMullen's travels reignited his creative spirit and he says as a result he finally finished the screenplay he has been writing for years and worked on his autobiography.

He shopped the screenplay around in LA.

"The response was good and I think it ticked all the boxes for them," he reports.

"But I think that the hardest part will be convincing them that I should play the lead role."

McMullen takes comfort from the experience of Sylvester Stallone, whom he says was rejected by 19 studios before he convinced one of them that he should play the role of Rocky.

With so much going on in his life, how does he feel about returning to The Voice?

"I prefer The Voice this year," he says.

"I think it is a better show. The level of talent is brilliant because a lot of good artists watched it last year, saw that it wasn't just a rubbish reality show where they would be judged on their looks and decided to audition because The Voice has integrity.

"The hardest thing that we have to face this year is that we have artists from a load of different genres, including jazz, Broadway musicals and rock and roll, so judging them will not be easy."

With stories of disharmony between the judges this season, McMullen confirms that the dynamic is certainly less mellow. "The judges have given up on the niceties," he says. "There's a fiery relationship between Seal and Delta. She did need to toughen up a bit and I think you will see a very different Delta this year.

"Maybe it's because she has Ricky Martin there with her.

"Or maybe it's because she has realised that she has to stand up for herself because the boys won't hold back."

As to his own position on the show, McMullen says that he is destined to ruffle some feathers with his brutal honesty on and off the set.

"I am passionate about The Voice and I wear my heart on my sleeve," he says. "It can be quite polarising but at least I am always true to myself."