‘Shell of a person’: Kylie Minogue details secret cancer battle and painful IVF journey in Netflix’s ‘Kylie’

Pop princess Kylie Minogue has revealed that she was diagnosed with breast cancer for a second time in early 2021, which left her feeling like “a shell of a person”.

In the new Netflix documentary, Kylie, a teary and emotional Minogue explains that she “got through it again and all is well” but turned the harrowing experience into the song Story, which appears on her 2023 album, Tension, also home to her viral, Grammy-winning single Padam Padam.

“Story was written because my second cancer diagnosis was in early 2021,” Minogue says in the final moments of the three-part documentary. “I was able to keep that to myself and go through that year, not like the first time. I have been trying to find the right time to say it.

“I don’t feel obliged to tell the world and actually I just couldn’t at the time because I was just a shell of a person. I didn’t want to leave the house again at one point. Padam Padam opened so many doors for me but on the inside I knew that cancer wasn’t just a blip in my life.

“Thankfully, I got through it. Again. And all is well.”

“And I really just wanted to say what happened so I could let go of it. I would sit through interviews and every opportunity I would think ‘now is the time’ but I kept it to myself. So, I needed to have something that marked that time.”

If Minogue’s cancer revelation is the biggest bombshell in a comprehensive and inspirational career retrospective that’s full of them, her IVF journey during her first cancer battle and her long-held desire to be a mother is not far behind.

Minogue postponed her chemotherapy during her gruelling 2005 fight with breast cancer to undergo the treatment, which she says was “scary at the time” but that “I couldn’t not try”.

“I did try IVF a number of times,” she says. “If it had happened it would have been just shy of a miracle but it didn’t work out that way.”

Again, the painful experience inspired the 2012 song Flower, which she now describes as “a letter to what might have been”.

“One can’t help but wonder what it would have been like,” she says. “I am so close to my family … it wasn’t my path.”

Directed by Emmy and BAFTA Award winner Michael Harte, Kylie is a testament to the talent, persistence and reliance of one of Australia’s finest musical exports, tracing her journey from precocious child actor in Melbourne to global pop superstar, overcoming prejudice and preconceptions at every turn.

From her breakout role in Neighbours and early pop success with production house Stock, Aitken Waterman, it shows the singer at her steely best overcoming her inner self-doubt and the scepticism of the music industry. As she negotiated stardom in the UK that first embraced her and then turned on her savagely, dismissing her as “the Singing Budgie”, she was also juggling her high-profile relationship with fellow Ramsay St resident Jason Donovan, who admits he was jealous of her early success and feared he would lose her as her star rose.

Minogue also acknowledges the influence of her former partner Michael Hutchence, admitting she has been searching for a relationship like the one she had with the late INXS singer ever since. The pair had a relationship between 1989 and 1991, when INXS was at the height of its powers and she was trying to reinvent herself and move away from the bubblegum pop rut she felt she was in.

Although Minogue says she was devastated when Hutchence ended the relationship, she still cherishes their time together and credits the singer and his band for giving her the confidence to express and assert herself in her music.

“He was the first in so many ways and one of those firsts was heartbreak,” Minogue says. “I was devastated – he was a rock star. Which doesn’t just mean he needs to have many women in his life but he needed to go where he needed to go – but I know from people in his circle that he talked of me and thought of me.

“We were good together. Shoulda, woulda, coulda – whatever – you go on and live your lives. But it was definitely an amazing point in time and I have probably been looking for something like that ever since and I haven’t got it.”

Compatriot Nick Cave, with whom Minogue collaborated on the 1995 murder balled Where The Wild Roses Grow, also sings her praises. He reveals that he initially got push-back from his management when he suggested they sing together, and that he and his band The Bad Seeds were initially intimidated by her energy and positivity.

“This group of weird, f***ed-up broken men – a lot of drugs and a contemptuous, pessimistic view of the world but when she came into the studio she was like this beam of light with this incredible positivity,” Cave says.

“I don’t think we had met anyone really in our lives that liked life. Just this bold brightness and we were terrified of it to some degree.”

Minogue also reveals it was Cave who helped convince her to return to her pop roots after her commercial failure 1997 album, Impossible Princess, which gave her a new lease on life and would lead to some of her biggest hits including video favourite Spinning Around and the Grammy-winning classic, Can’t Get You Out Of My Head.

“The great beauty of pop music is that it’s a joy machine,” Minogue says.

“You have the coolest guy on the planet saying – where is the pop tunes? Right, let’s get the jet packs on and get back to the dance floor – but if this doesn’t work, I am finished.”

With in-depth interviews with Minogue herself and younger sister Dannii – and rare glimpses of their private parents Ron and Carol and brother Brendan – the singer also pays touching tribute to the family that has been with her through all of her ups and downs.

And then there’s the music, with countless clips, live videos and behind-the-scenes footage from the studio of her biggest hits serving as a fitting testament of why Kylie is truly a national treasure.