“Vinotherapy? That’s where you drink copious amounts of wine to feel better,” Celeste Barber says with certainty. We’re on the set of her Women’s Health cover shoot, talking about some of the most outlandish wellness trends in recent years, like this spa treatment, which is actually one where you soak in a tub filled with wine-infused water.
The wine soak is preceded by a full-body exfoliation with a scrub made out of wine grape extracts, all in a bid to lower cholesterol and stimulate collagen. “Sure. I reckon six people did that study,” Celeste deadpans after being told of the purported benefits (FYI: there was no study), “but I’m in.”
With 9.4 million Instagram followers – Drew Barrymore and Cindy Crawford are just some of her famous fans – the northern NSW local has come a long way since starting her #Celestechallengeaccepted parody posts back in 2015. Using the momentum of global recognition, Celeste took her stand-up comedy tour across 53 cities in the US, Europe and Canada, with two reprisals at the Sydney Opera House last year. Now, she’s returned to her acting roots with Wellmania, a comedy-drama based on the novel of the same name by Australian writer Brigid Delaney, which launches globally on Netflix. The series follows Celeste’s character Liv Healy, a writer living a life of decadence in New York, who suffers a major health crisis that puts her career goals on hold and sees her embark on a radical wellness journey back home in Oz.
(sold as a set with bracelet). Photo: Steve Baccon. Styling: Nicole Adolphe.
The common thread through Celeste’s work is her knack for making us laugh while making an adroit observation on the impossible expectations of women. Wellness trends with no scientific evidence behind them – masquerading as ‘health’ – is a perfect example. But all jokes aside for the moment, Celeste admits that looking after herself is more important than ever. “I turned 40 last year,” she says. “I’m quite childlike, energetically, but trust me, I’m fucking 40.
“Now, as I get older and having children and this success; trying to have success and a family is very hard. I try to keep all of that in check. And so my view on wellness has become a lot more important to me, because I need to be onto it or it will escape me.”
Project wellness
It might be a tongue-in-cheek look at the wellness industry, but just like Celeste’s Instagram posts, Wellmania succeeds in using humour to highlight uncomfortable truths. Watching it makes you question if it’s health you’re really investing in, or the pursuit of an unattainable aesthetic. It’s something Celeste can relate to, having undergone two formative life experiences that shaped her view of health into a holistic one.
“Wellness has always played a big part in my life, and not in the traditional sense of sit-ups and all that,” she explains. “I need to keep my mental health on track. I have ADHD – I was diagnosed very young with it – and I’ve been on and off medication for it for years. I get quite anxious and a lot of that can be as a result from the medication, so that’s a bit of a shit to deal with. But also, I had emergency open heart surgery when I was 25, so I need to look at wellness.”
Celeste pauses briefly. “It’s not something that just comes easily, I have to actually factor it into my life. I’m not someone who can go, ‘Oh I just happened to drink three litres of water today.’ That’s not me. It’ll be midday and I’ve had five coffees.” She gestures to the full glass of water placed before her on the table. “That cup of water will sit there [untouched] til the end.”
She laughs then, and it’s clear Celeste is like so many of us. “I just called my husband and was like, ‘I slept for seven hours and 20 minutes.’ And he was like, ‘Are you kidding?’ Because I’m not a very good sleeper. I said, ‘Yep.’ I woke up, went on the treadmill… for 15 minutes, but I did something. Then I put a face mask on. I’m enjoying it because as I say, it doesn’t come easily to me. It’s like, this is a big deal for me to do.”
A wave of change
The toxic side of the wellness industry is what her on-screen character Liv succumbs to, by way of liquid diets and the search for quick-fix results. Celeste’s own approach is quite different. On her Instagram stories, you’ll see her dancing to Harry Styles and Lizzo for a mental health boost (Celeste was a dancer when she was younger) and having a laugh while doing Hollywood fave Tracy Anderson’s new MyMode workout.
“Five years ago, wellness was pushed as body-shaming,” she says. “It was not wellness, it was diet culture. Diet culture grabbed the idea and went, ‘If you are thin, you are happy.’ I said that in my first stand-up show. I don’t support any products that make women feel we need to look a certain way, to feel a certain way. And that’s still the case. Back then, that’s what it was: ‘You’re feeling shit about yourself? Have this shake, and you’ll feel better. Your husband’s cheating on you? Have this pill, you’ll lose weight and he’ll stop cheating.’”
“I get excited for this generation,” Celeste shares. “I’ve got two step-girls who are 21 and 23, and they are all about wellness. They’re all about what they need, what’s required of them, how much they’re willing to give out. They’re all about self-help and mental health and I’m excited for them. And I’m kind of on the cusp of it.”
Get to know Lachlan Buchanan
Say hi to Celeste’s on-screen brother, Gaz Healy. Though he sports the same gym-honed physique as his Wellmania character, Lachlan admits to being a lover of the outdoors and team sports rather than the gym. “I do intermittent fasting, and then I do my circuit workouts and a lot of cardio. Running, swimming, ultimate frisbee – stuff like that.”
Fave exercise: “Dodgeball, ultimate frisbee – a team sport like that.”
Frenemy exercise: “The gym. If you see me at the gym: miserable, angry face.”
Workout music: “It’s weird. A mix of soundtrack music, but then it can go to some Backstreet Boys, it’s a mix of all weird things that keeps me on my toes.”
Real-life heroes: “Growing up, I always loved Steve Irwin; looking after the world, being a cool guy. But also my mum, she’s a rockstar. She raised five kids!”
Last time you laughed: “Five minutes ago when I ran into Celeste.”
The power of connection
Reflecting on her role in the show, Celeste says: “As a woman in the industry – and I think women in general – in your late 30s, 40s and onwards, we start to get invisible. We start to learn to kind of just placate and fall in line, and this character doesn’t do that. She is loud. She has to stop and reconnect with herself and her family. And I hope people see the fun and the joy in it, and the importance of that connection.”
It’s a connection that goes within, too. “I know I’ve totally lost that over these last few years,” she says. “I don’t know what the fuck I am or who I am or what I’m doing or where I belong after the pandemic. And then us all coming out of that and going, ‘Oh, everything’s normal’… I think, ‘Oh no, I don’t know if it is?’ It’s that sense of grappling with yourself.”
It’s made complicated by some of her followers, who had once hailed Celeste as an icon of the body positivity movement and then backflipped recently, criticising what they deem her ‘hot transformation’. “I always have a little wrestle with myself, whether in the comments, if I should get in there and chat with people. But I’ve made a blanket decision not to do that. I look at what I put out there as kind of a show, then you guys can review it, essentially, and I pull back. If people start to go a bit nuts, I might put up a story being like, ‘Everyone just chill and be kind’, because… fuck, people will just go after anything they can.”
When it comes to what’s next – a slew of projects already in the works – Celeste’s priorities are clear. No matter how tricky the balancing act might be, she has never wavered from the connection that matters most. “What’s next for me is really working on the balance: how to make it all work, and make sure that everyone is well – everyone that I know and I love,” she shares. “It’s its own job, and it’s really hard. I haven’t done it before.”
The wine soak is preceded by a full-body exfoliation with a scrub made out of wine grape extracts, all in a bid to lower cholesterol and stimulate collagen. “Sure. I reckon six people did that study,” Celeste deadpans after being told of the purported benefits (FYI: there was no study), “but I’m in.”
With 9.4 million Instagram followers – Gwyneth Paltrow, Drew Barrymore and Cindy Crawford are just some of her famous fans – the northern NSW local has come a long way since starting her #Celestechallengeaccepted parody posts back in 2015. Using the momentum of global recognition, Celeste took her stand-up comedy tour across 53 cities in the US, Europe and Canada, with two reprisals at the Sydney Opera House last year. Now, she’s returned to her acting roots with Wellmania, a comedy-drama based on the novel of the same name by Australian writer Brigid Delaney, which launched globally on Netflix. The series follows Celeste’s character Liv Healy, a writer living a life of decadence in New York, who suffers a major health crisis that puts her career goals on hold and sees her embark on a radical wellness journey back home in Oz.
The common thread through Celeste’s work is her knack for making us laugh while making an adroit observation on the impossible expectations of women. Wellness trends with no scientific evidence behind them – masquerading as ‘health’ – is a perfect example. But all jokes aside for the moment, Celeste admits that looking after herself is more important than ever. “I turned 40 last year,” she says. “I’m quite childlike, energetically, but trust me, I’m fucking 40.
“Now, as I get older and having children and this success; trying to have success and a family is very hard. I try to keep all of that in check. And so my view on wellness has become a lot more important to me, because I need to be onto it or it will escape me.”
Project wellness
It might be a tongue-in-cheek look at the wellness industry, but just like Celeste’s Instagram posts, Wellmania succeeds in using humour to highlight uncomfortable truths. Watching it makes you question if it’s health you’re really investing in, or the pursuit of an unattainable aesthetic. It’s something Celeste can relate to, having undergone two formative life experiences that shaped her view of health into a holistic one.
“Wellness has always played a big part in my life, and not in the traditional sense of sit-ups and all that,” she explains. “I need to keep my mental health on track. I have ADHD – I was diagnosed very young with it – and I’ve been on and off medication for it for years. I get quite anxious and a lot of that can be as a result from the medication, so that’s a bit of a shit to deal with. But also, I had emergency open heart surgery when I was 25, so
I need to look at wellness.”
Celeste pauses briefly. “It’s not something that just comes easily, I have to actually factor it into my life. I’m not someone who can go, ‘Oh I just happened to drink three litres of water today.’ That’s not me. It’ll be midday and I’ve had five coffees.” She gestures to the full glass of water placed before her on the table. “That cup of water will sit there [untouched] til the end.”
She laughs then, and it’s clear Celeste is like so many of us. “I just called my husband and was like, ‘I slept for seven hours and 20 minutes.’ And he was like, ‘Are you kidding?’ Because I’m not a very good sleeper. I said, ‘Yep.’ I woke up, went on the treadmill… for 15 minutes, but I did something. Then I put a face mask on. I’m enjoying it because as I say, it doesn’t come easily to me. It’s like, this is a big deal for me to do.”
A wave of change
The toxic side of the wellness industry is what her on-screen character Liv succumbs to, by way of liquid diets and the search for quick-fix results. Celeste’s own approach is quite different. On her Instagram stories, you’ll see her dancing to Harry Styles and Lizzo for a mental health boost (Celeste was a dancer when she was younger) and having a laugh while doing Hollywood fave Tracy Anderson’s new MyMode workout.
“Five years ago, wellness was pushed as body-shaming,” she says. “It was not wellness, it was diet culture. Diet culture grabbed the idea and went, ‘If you are thin, you are happy.’ I said that in my first stand-up show. I don’t support any products that make women feel we need to look a certain way, to feel a certain way. And that’s still the case. Back then, that’s what it was: ‘You’re feeling shit about yourself? Have this shake, and you’ll feel better. Your husband’s cheating on you? Have this pill, you’ll lose weight and he’ll stop cheating.’”
“I get excited for this generation,” Celeste shares. “I’ve got two step-girls who are 21 and 23, and they
are all about wellness. They’re all about what they need, what’s required of them, how much they’re willing to give out. They’re all about self-help and mental health and I’m excited for them. And I’m kind of on the cusp of it.”
The power of connection
Reflecting on her role in the show, Celeste says: “As a woman in the industry – and I think women in general – in your late 30s, 40s and onwards, we start to get invisible. We start to learn to kind of just placate and fall in line, and this character doesn’t do that. She is loud. She has to stop and reconnect with herself and her family. And I hope people see the fun and the joy in it, and the importance of that connection.”
It’s a connection that goes within, too. “I know I’ve totally lost that over these last few years,” she says. “I don’t know what the fuck I am or who I am or what I’m doing or where I belong after the pandemic. And then us all coming out of that and going, ‘Oh, everything’s normal’… I think, ‘Oh no, I don’t know if it is?’ It’s that sense of grappling with yourself.”
It’s made complicated by some of her followers, who had once hailed Celeste as an icon of the body positivity movement and then backflipped recently, criticising what they deem her ‘hot transformation’. “I always have a little wrestle with myself, whether in the comments, if I should get in there and chat with people. But I’ve made a blanket decision not to do that. I look at what I put out there as kind of a show, then you guys can review it, essentially, and I pull back. If people start to go a bit nuts, I might put up a story being like, ‘Everyone just chill and be kind’, because… fuck, people will just go after anything they can.”
When it comes to what’s next – a slew of projects already in the works – Celeste’s priorities are clear. No matter how tricky the balancing act might be, she has never wavered from the connection that matters most. “What’s next for me is really working on the balance: how to make it all work, and make sure that everyone is well – everyone that I know and I love,” she shares. “It’s its own job, and it’s really hard. I haven’t done it before.”
Editor-in-Chief: Lizza Gebilagin. Photography: Steve Baccon. Styling: Nicole Adolphe. Hair: Brad Mullins. Make-Up: Filomena Natoli. Creative Direction: Amanda McCourt. Location: Pure Locations.
Read the full story in the May issue Women’s Health Australia featuring Celeste Barber, on sale Monday April 3.
