Kylie Minogue said she was moved by Jason Donovan’s candour in a new three-part Netflix documentary about her life, as the singer reflected this week on a project built from some of the most personal material in her archive. Speaking at a suite in Soho’s Ham Yard Hotel, she said the film is still under wraps for viewers: “It’s not out in the wild yet,” she said, adding that “the trust fall was one worth taking.”
The documentary traces Minogue’s rise from Charlene on Neighbours in the late 1980s to a career that has now sold more than 80 million records, but one of its sharpest moments comes when Donovan talks openly about their relationship. The pair dated from 1986 to 1989, and he appears speaking candidly about a period that shaped both of them, while the film also includes never-before-seen personal photographs and home videos from Minogue’s own archives.
Minogue returned to her native Australia after nearly three decades living in the UK, a move that gives the project an added sense of homecoming. She said seeing the old footage brought her back to a version of her life that remains vivid decades later: “It’s just unreal,” she said, before adding, “I was very moved by what Jason said and also all the footage of us in Neighbours.”
The documentary is directed by Michael Harte and arrives with the weight of a life lived in public, but not fully exposed. Minogue has spent four decades in the spotlight while keeping much of her private life hidden, and the film leans into that tension rather than avoiding it. One of its most painful passages comes when Donovan is asked about his feelings toward Michael Hutchence, who famously dated Minogue for two years after her split from Donovan in 1989.
That conversation matters because it does what polished celebrity projects often do not: it lets the awkwardness stay in the room. Donovan’s remarks are described as candid and emotionally difficult, and they sit alongside Minogue’s own account of what it means to revisit old images, old relationships and old versions of herself. The result is less a neat retelling than a reckoning with the cost of being known from a distance.
Minogue’s cancer battle also hangs over the story as something she is still navigating 20 years on, giving the film another layer of weight beyond nostalgia. The documentary does not simply revisit the past for decoration. It asks how much of a life can be handed over to a camera, and Minogue’s answer, at least for now, is that this was a risk worth taking.
