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It is Christmas Eve and Tziporah Malkah is strutting around her tiny inner-city apartment in nothing but her “bunny underwear”, belting out show tunes at the top of her lungs and intermittently screaming: “Kate Fischer is dead.” The one-time supermodel is on edge, having just opened up about the simmering sexual tension she shared with former Nine proprietor Kerry Packer, the debilitating sexual assaults she suffered as a teen, and her hard-won relationship with her high-profile mother, Pru Goward.
While she cannot be placated, Malkah’s bizarre outburst will come as no surprise to her neighbours. “Oh shut up, will you,” the unpredictable 46-year-old hisses, taking a long swig from her oversized glass of sauvignon blanc.
“The police are going to be here soon anyway.” Officers from Kings Cross station a block away have become almost nightly visitors to her shambolic apartment in recent weeks, urged on by family and friends’ increasing concerns about her seemingly unravelling mental state. Their distress is understandable, given Malkah’s bouts of erratic behaviour, two AVO charges and progressively disturbing social media posts — many of which feature interactions with police and paramedics. She has agreed to be interviewed because she wants to lay those concerns to rest. “I’m not insane,” she says from the outset. “I’m a psychopath — but I’m not insane.” She openly concedes she is damaged, though. “Who wouldn’t be?” she asks. She explains she has ridden a celebrity rollercoaster most of her life, and watched her star fade twice: first in 1998, following her split from billionaire fiance James Packer, and again this year after her brief resurgence flickered out following a slimmed-down photoshoot in the pages of a woman’s magazine.
She readily admits she has exploited her fame as much as she has been exploited by it, and insists that after all she has been through, she deserves to tell the unadulterated story of her public life and the impact that it has had on her.
Entering Malkah’s world can be disconcerting for the uninitiated — and it is hard to tell when she is being serious. Whenever queried, she huffs and maintains she is simply pushing the boundaries of what people perceive as normal.
“I’m not cookie-cutter; I’m challenging,” she says. “I challenge everything....