Sweet Nell: The Story of Australia's Rose
Sweet Nell: The Story of Australia’s Rose is a 6-part, richly told narrative podcast about fame, forgetting, and the women who built Australian theatre long before their stories were written out of it.
Hosted by acclaimed performer and producer Ali McGregor, the series traces the extraordinary life of Eleanor “Nellie” Stewart - the most celebrated stage star of 19th-century Australia. Sweet Nell was adored, scrutinised, scandalised, and mythologised in her own lifetime, yet today her name has all but vanished from public memory.
Each episode blends immersive storytelling, archival research, and personal reflection, following Nellie from gaslit pantomimes and grand opera houses to international tours, secret marriages, artistic reinvention, and enduring love. Along the way, we meet the formidable women who came before her, the theatre dynasties that shaped a nation’s cultural life, and the precarious realities of making art while navigating class, motherhood, and public expectation.
The series opens at sea in 1893, with Nellie travelling alone with her baby, poised between past and future, fame and anonymity, an image that echoes through generations of artists, including the host herself.
Sweet Nell is not just a biography. It is an exploration of legacy, adaptation, and why some stories are remembered while others quietly disappear. Across six episodes, this podcast asks a simple question with far-reaching consequences: who decides what, and who we keep?
Sweet Nell: The Story of Australia's Rose
Latest Episodes
Episode 5: Triumph, Tragedy and the Birth of a Legend
In this episode of Sweet Nell: The Story of Australia’s Rose, we follow Nellie Stewart through one of the most dramatic periods of her life and career. Returning to the stage after the birth of her daughter, Nellie throws herself back ...
Episode 4: Alone on the High Cs
In this deeply personal episode, I trace Nellie Stewart’s return to Australia in 1893 - not as the adored “Rose of Australia,” but as a new mother travelling incognito across the world with her six-week-old baby. From triumph and tragedy at Mel...
Episode 3: Bracelets of Gold
A secret marriage, a defiant love affair, and a symbol that would become legend. In Episode Three of Sweet Nell, Ali McGregor follows Nellie Stewart through heartbreak and resolve as she refuses a respectable life in favour of the stag...
