“I’D FALL TO MY KNEES!”: Beloved The Block judge Darren Palmer ignites a massive media firestorm and leaves millions of fans completely paralyzed with overwhelming emotion after bravely exposing a shattering, tear-jerking confession ruthlessly revealing the highly terrifying, agonizing hidden medical battle that secretly and violently destroyed his life off-camera
Darren Palmer on raising his teenage son and judging a new season of The Block
He is known for his judging role on The Block. Now, Darren Palmer has opened up about his personal life – including his son, Hugo.
Watching Darren Palmer judge rooms on The Block, where he’s never shy with both his opinions or with ripping off his shirt to showcase his hard-earned muscles, it’s easy to assume he’s an out-and-proud extrovert.
However, the interior designer insists he’s really an introvert who just knows how to put on a good show.
“It’s pretty common to be an introvert that does a job like mine because I’m very comfortable in front of a crowd of 1000 people, but I’m not comfortable inside a crowd of 1000 people,” he tells Stellar.
“I interact with people because I enjoy working, but I also need to be alone.
“So every four to six weeks, I’ll go and stay somewhere on my own for a night, just to recharge my batteries.”
Travelling from his home in Bondi to film The Block in Victoria (which this season is located in the seaside hamlet of Mt Eliza) offers Palmer built-in windows of essential solitude.
After delivering his verdicts on contestants’ renovation work, he usually heads to his hotel, orders room service, and unwinds with a sci-fi film.
Palmer is grateful that his husband, Olivier Duvillard, understands this need for me-time, while also accepting that a hectic work schedule inevitably takes him away from home for stretches.
“We finished The Block last year, and it was cold. Then I got on a plane and flew to Sicily, where it was like 40°C,” Palmer says of working on his upcoming series 1 Euro House, which sees him renovating a dilapidated Italian villa with fellow Block judge Shaynna Blaze.
“So I got to enjoy summer, and then I got to enjoy summer again, and then I got to come home and enjoy summer.
“Olivier was very excited. He’s the best support system ever.”
Growing up in the small Queensland industrial town of Gladstone, he admits, “I didn’t even think I’d leave the country.
“I didn’t pay attention to French at school – and I married a Frenchman, though I still don’t speak French properly. I was a kid in the 1980s and early ’90s.
“Life like this just didn’t exist. So, the fact I’ve got a tapware range and rug ranges, and art and cushions and candles, and two successful podcasts, and books, and an education platform that sold globally, and I’m on the TV show everybody watches …
How on earth could I have known any of that would be possible for that little country kid who was apparently neurodivergent?”
Palmer got tested for ADHD after a candid chat with Myf Warhurst on his Almost Home podcast last year.
As the Spicks & Specks star described living with ADHD, Palmer began to see distinct parallels with his own life. The diagnosis may have surprised him, but it was no shock to his loved ones, who have long watched in wonder as he juggled various passion projects.
As he says, “I’ve only got two speeds: sprint or stop.”
The diagnosis put things in sharp focus for Palmer. “[It] helps me be a little bit more compassionate with myself because I can be very self-critical,” he admits.
“It’s very hard for me to feel like what you think I look like on the outside.”
Looking back, he can understand why some things came so easily while others were a huge slog – especially when he was in the classroom. It’s the same journey he’s now watching in his 17-year-old son, Hugo, who has also been diagnosed with ADHD.
“I know it seems like it’s the fashion these days and that everybody’s got [ADHD],” Palmer tells Stellar. “But [Hugo] was diagnosed well before me.
“I watch my son at school and how well he’s doing, and I think, ‘I wish I’d known when I was his age,’ because my whole school experience would have been completely different.”
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‘IT’S A GOOD DAY FOR ME’
To cope with his busy mind over the years, he’s devised several strategies, chief among them intense physical exercise.
“Being at the gym, my mind stops and my body takes over,” he says.
“I have this break from the cognitive load, which is a real benefit.”
That vital outlet was threatened during the pandemic, when he had to have a disc in his spine replaced after learning it had deteriorated to the point where bone was rubbing against bone. For years, he’d lived with chronic pain, operating under the mindset that he should just get on with it.
“I couldn’t bend over to brush my teeth, load the dishwasher, or walk my dog properly,” recalls Palmer, who is now pain-free.
“And when I used to sneeze, I’d fall to my knees.”
An added upside to his gruelling workouts is that he is always camera-ready for The Block’s annual promos, which have famously featured him shirtless on a horse, shirtless among hay bales, and shirtless on a beach, Baywatch-style.
This year, viewers might notice him showing a little less skin, but he laughs off any suggestion that it’s the result of new-found modesty.
“That’s nothing to do with me,” he reveals. “I mean, I’m 48 years old.
“Every second that I can still get my shirt off and people don’t want to recoil, it’s a good day for me.”