National treasure Suzy Cato is back for a whole new generation of little kids! We sat down with her to talk Peter Pan energy, the skincare tricks keeping her ageless, moving through depression, and why turning 50 mid-reality telly (menopause and all) became her “what’s next?” moment.
This interview was filmed on the incredible Samsung S26 Ultra (seriously!) and brought to you by our pals at Samsung. For our full review of the S26 Ultra, click here!
There are some people who walk into a room and the whole place gets ten degrees warmer. Suzy Cato is, for sure, one of them!
CONVERSATIONS WITH CAPSULE, POWERED BY SAMSUNG
If you grew up in the 90s, you already know her – she’s your pal, your mate, your always-happy sing-a-long buddy and the woman who helped raise us. Now, she’s back with brand-new episodes of You and Me for a brand new batch of small humans, plus, as she puts it, “all those little kids who are now big kids.” So, us!
I have to admit I was a little nervous interviewing her – don’t meet your heroes and all – but, of course, she was radiant, bubbly and ready for a chat that, to be honest, went a lot deeper than I expected (with a few sing-a-longs of course, excuse my stupid little happy face!). In about ninety seconds of starting the chat, she’d handed us a life philosophy on a plate.
“Mum has always called me Peter Pan, and I refuse to grow up,” she says, “which doesn’t help as an executive producer, because you sometimes have to put your big girl pants on, and it’s not good.”
Same, girl, same.
But it would be a mistake to read all that sparkle as a lack of depth. When we asked what carries her through, she got honest fast. As a younger woman, she tells, she took herself far too seriously, weathered bouts of depression, and overthought absolutely everything. Children’s TV, it turns out, was how she found the real her – it taught her to laugh at herself, to make peace with getting things wrong, and to treat her mistakes not as failures but as “stepping stones in your progress.”
She’s also refreshingly done with caring what everyone thinks. Someone once told her that if you don’t feel the pain and angst as a young person you’ve got no heart, and if you’re not over it by her age, you’ve got no head. “I’m not everybody’s cup of tea,” she shrugged, “but it’s much easier to do at this stage in life.”
In this candid chat where we discuss menopause – mercifully brief, “only a few months of hot flushes and things like that” – self-doubt, skincare (LOOK at that face?!), the inappropriate times she’s been asked to sing the songs, and so much more.
The only thing she hasn’t quite cracked? A hobby. Decades of running businesses and making low-budget kids’ content have left precisely zero time for one, so she’s officially in the market. If you have a suggestion (nothing scary, she begs), Capsule is taking applications on her behalf!
Check out our chat above! See ya, see ya later!
The new episodes, as well as the classic You and Me episodes are on YouTube – search for the channel called You and Me NZ.
