Lucia Field may not know any different than growing up with her dad as original Blue Wiggle Anthony, but since sporting the same hued skivvy herself, the 22-year-old now has a better understanding of the juggernaut he was juggling with home life.
“When I was in primary school, he’d come and pick me up, and I wouldn’t have realised that he’d just got off a flight from doing Madison Square Garden the day before,” recounts Field, who became the second Blue Wiggle in 2022.
“It is so crazy to think about now. I don’t remember this but when I was even younger, I used to point everyone out to dad when we’d watch Wiggles, telling him ‘Oh, that’s Murray, that’s Greg’ as if I was the one showing him this new show that he’d never seen.
“Dad would be away for seven months out of the year, working and travelling, and I wouldn’t get to see him, so now it feels like we’re making up for lost time. When we’re travelling, it always feels like there’s a piece of home with me, because there literally is.”
It would be easy yet incorrect to assume either of them saw her current career path coming, after Field moved from the Sydney family home at age 13 to study at The Australian Ballet School in Melbourne.
Three years later, the stress of COVID-19 and taking classes online made Field re-evaluate her decision, moving back home to complete Year 12 at McDonald College. She worked the following year as a Wiggles background dancer while figuring out what she wanted to do next.
“I thought it would be something creative but never expected this would be the outcome,” she says.
“It wasn’t even Dad’s idea either, because I’d never sung around him before. I’d done some backing vocals at Wiggles one time when he wasn’t even there and when they were looking to change the line-up again, our sound engineer Al told Dad, ‘Oh, Lucia, she can actually sing a little bit’, and Dad was like, ‘Really now?’
“I was at my cousin’s apartment when he gave me a call, and it was literally out of nowhere. He’s like, ‘Hey Luc, hope the day is going well. Would you like to become a Wiggle?’ and I was like, ‘Sorry?’
“Of course, I said ‘Yes’, and then two weeks later I was recording songs and trying on skivvies and figuring out my hairstyle. It was kind of a whirlwind, but it’s almost better that it was like that because I feel if it took a bit longer, I would have stewed on it too much.”
While blue is in her blood, Field reveals she was almost given the yellow skivvy before it was deemed not to be her colour, and in hindsight, would not have made much sense anyway.
Related or not, The Wiggles family is undeniably a collaborative environment these days when it comes to writing a new album, having just released Sparkle! A Circus Of Lights following a shared songwriting process.
When asked to describe the experience of recording Sparkle! A Circus Of Lights, Field sums it up in one word — wacky.
“We literally have a song called Inflatable Animals, and one of the lyrics is ‘All it eats is air’ which is true,” she laughs.
“When we first joined Wiggles, us newer Wiggles were a bit hesitant to maybe put in our two words. Now it’s been quite a few years, and we’re all just, ‘Hey, I’ve got an idea for this song’. One of my favourite songs on the new album, which is Lachy’s Sparkle Music Machine, my little brother Antonio actually wrote with my cousin Seamus.
“Dad still writes a lot of the instrumentals because he has such a quirky knowledge of music genres, taking inspiration from old Scottish tunes that he learns on bagpipes and the banjo, to the Greek bouzouki.”
After launching their Sparkle skivvies and the new album title, the Australian children’s music group are touring the country with the aptly named The Wiggles’ Sparkle! Big Show, which Field says is set to take sparkle to the max.
It is not lost on her that many children in the audience will join previous generations in making The Wiggles their first live show experience, as her dad continues to put his heart and soul into every performance alongside her.
“I definitely have so many moments, on and off-stage, where I am just in awe of everything he has done,” she says.
The Wiggles’ Sparkle! Big Show is at RAC Arena, November 21. Tickets at premier.ticketek.com.au
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