Front Row: Logies winner Ally Langdon exposes family secret and Robert Irwin’s unfiltered TV regret

Front Row is a new weekly column on nine.com.au bringing you behind the scenes of some of the Aussie entertainment industry’s biggest parties, premieres, and more. Got a tip? Email us at frontrow@nine.com.au.

This week, Front Row has a special Monday edition because we have an (exhaustion) hangover from the madly chaotic 2026 TV Week Logie Awards. We got all the gossip on red carpet underwear confessions, family secrets and got some of our own on what Australia’s stars are truly like when they’re in the wild.

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to work the Logies red carpet, picture the bustling chaos of a Marrakech bazaar.

Instead of haggling over hand-woven rugs, you are frantically bargaining with overstimulated publicists for thirty seconds of a celebrity’s time while tripping over three-foot train dresses.

It is an absolute, high-heeled contact sport. Microphones are flying, sequins are snagging on velvet ropes, and everyone is trying to maintain red-carpet glamour while operating in total survival mode.

Take Sarah Abo, who easily takes the cake as the biggest trooper of the night. She fronted up just four weeks after giving birth to her first child, baby boy Sonny.

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Amid the red carpet insanity, she casually confessed she’d be checking in on Sonny upstairs “every hour because I’m just obsessed with him, actually.” But the real madness struck when we roped her into our red carpet ‘celebrity question relay’. 

Having been handed a golden baton by us, Sarah was hit with a question left behind by none other than Sophie Monk: “What colour, if any, undies are you wearing?”

Without missing a beat, Sarah cheekily owned up: “Oh, that’s easy! They’re grey.” But in the whirlwind – juggling a microphone and handbag in one hand and a gold relay baton in the other – she had a classic multitasking slip-up.

Sarah hoisted the golden baton directly to her mouth and began speaking passionately into it, ignoring the actual microphone. Honestly? Relatable. At that point in the evening, we were half-tempted to report into the baton ourselves.

Over in the reality TV corner, Married at First Sight experts John Aiken and Alessandra Rampolla gave a cheeky tease of Season 14 of the experiment which they are currently filming.

“It’s a really interesting part of the experiment now because [the brides and grooms] still haven’t quite revealed themselves to us,” Aiken said.

“That tends to happen as we go along. So we’re right at the part where it gets really exciting because we just really don’t know who’s going to make it and who won’t.”

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Meanwhile, Samantha Armytage strutted past in a sparkling jumpsuit looking like an absolute goddess. When we asked if her outfit was actually wearable for a long night of posing and dancing, she grinned, “It is! It’s actually stretchy, so it’s very comfortable.”

She was riding high on the success of The Golden Bachelor, beaming, “To get a show up and running in this era of television is hard enough, but to have it nominated for an award in its first season is a great achievement. I’m very proud.”

Elsewhere in the marketplace, Gold Logie nominee Julia Morris was casually delivering a masterclass in self-deprecation.

When asked if she’d written a Gold Logie acceptance speech, she scoffed, explaining that her ADHD brain physically won’t allow it: “You cannot focus long enough to hope that it’s true... So I am going to let my insanity do the work for me on the night!”

Meanwhile, Ally Langdon was treating us to some deep-seated family trauma, casually confessing: “I once blamed my brother for a little fire that we set on our family farm that I’ve just now confessed to. It was nice to get that off my chest!”

Over in the game show arena, Rodger Corser admitted he loves hosting The Floor because it’s practically a cheat code for the showbiz industry.

“I don’t have to ask a question! I just chat to people, I walk away, and then I’ve just got to read off the screen. So I’ve got it pretty easy,” he chuckled.

Logies host Robert Irwin was the last to waltz down the red carpet. Every reporter stuck their necks out to get a moment with the man of the evening, but publicists were clocking it at just 60 seconds!

Robert proved he’s far too wholesome for this world, admitting his biggest TV regret was making family pancakes that “tasted like sand” on a cooking show, before immediately using his airtime to campaign for Julia Morris to win Gold instead of himself.

By the end of the night, as we handed off our final golden baton, our feet were numb, our mics were battered, and we were pretty sure we’d accidentally bargained away our souls for a 10-second soundbite about underwear.

Would we do it all over again next year? Absolutely. Just pass us some flat shoes and maybe a map back to a non-bedazzled civilisation.