Television: The Australian soap star-turned-global celebrity revisits her lifetime in the spotlight in a new three-part Netflix seriesKylie Minogue at the launch of her Netflix documentary series, Kylie. Photograph: John Phillips/Getty Images Wed May 20 2026 - 06:00 • 5 MIN READWe just can’t get Kylie Minogue out of our heads. The original princess of pop went from topping the charts in her teens to duetting with Nick Cave in front of scruffy hordes of 1990s indie kids at the Féile festival in Páirc Uí Chaoimh in Cork – and has since gone on to release some of the greatest pop bangers of the 21st century.She revisits her lifetime in the spotlight in a new three-part Netflix documentary out on Wednesday. There are also interviews with her Neighbours costar Jason Donovan and with Cave, who invited Kylie to sing on his Murder Ballads album over the objections of his management team. But does Netflix’s Kylie tell us anything new about the soapstar-turned-singer? Here are 10 takeaways from the documentary series.1. Ireland was the scene of one of the most controversial moments in her early careerKylie Minogue in the Westbury Hotel, Dublin, in 1990. Photograph: Independent News and Media/Getty Images As the 1990s came around, Kylie was fed up with her “girl next door” image and decided to “raunch” things up by hiring designer John Galliano to create the outfits for her Let’s Get to It tour – including one “inspired by Lolita”. Kicking off in Plymouth in October 1991, the performance was enthusiastically ripped to shreds by the British tabloids: “Mary Poppins has turned into a hooker” was typical of the misogyny from the London press. However, it was the final date at The Point in Dublin on November 8th that features most prominently in the new documentary – largely because Kylie had brought the cameras along to make a live DVD.She tells Netflix that the costumes and suggestive dancing were a mistake. “We went a bit too far. I’m not going to lie.” The camera then cuts to an image of the singer in see-through leggings – the sort of thing that Madonna might have sported in her prime. “Maybe it was good in real life,” says a cringing Kylie. “It didn’t look good in freeze frame. I’m going to defend it with that.”2. Michael Hutchence broke Kylie’s heartMichael Hutchence with Kylie Minogue The squeaky-clean Neighbours star and the bad boy INXS frontman were a couple for two years – but Minogue is open about never quite getting over Hutchence and never experiencing the same fulfilment in a relationship. She blamed the end of the romance on his globe-trotting lifestyle as a rock star – saying the distance between them made things impossible. “We were good together. Shoulda, woulda, coulda, whatever. You go on and live your lives. But it was definitely an amazing point in time,” she says, blinking away tears as she recalls his death in November 1997. “I’ve probably been looking for something like that ever since, and I haven’t got it.”3. Kylie probably broke Jason Donovan’s heartKylie Minogue and Jason Donovan. Photograph: PA Wire Her Neighbours costar and one-time boyfriend is emotional throughout his appearance in episode one of the Kylie documentary, and at one point says he is going to walk out and immediately seek therapy. He adds that he is joking – but he clearly has never overcome the pain of having Kylie ditch him for Hutchence. He recalls accompanying Kylie backstage after an INXS concert. Did he get on with Hutchence? “He wasn’t interested in me,” says Donovan. “I could tell he was focused on her. I could sniff that one a mile away.”4. The British media hated herPerhaps because she was an Australian daring to conquer the UK charts, the press in Britain had it out for Kylie from the start. She was mocked as “the singing budgie” and cruelly parodied by a Spitting Image puppet. There was snobbery too. We see public intellectual and future Through the Keyhole co-presenter Loyd Grossman dismiss her by saying: “Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes, and 15 minutes can be a long time, especially when you spend it in the company of that Melbourne nightingale Kylie Minogue.” She tried to shrug it off, but the vitriol understandably got to her. “To be 19 years old and having to cop that?” she says, “That was unpleasant.”5. She recorded her breakthrough hit while panicking about missing her flight back to AustraliaJason Donavan and Kylie Minogue in Neighbours Kylie had flown to London to work with pop producers Stock Aitken Waterman. They squeezed in a frantic two-hour session the day Kylie was due to go back to Melbourne to resume her day job playing Charlene in Neighbours. With the clock ticking, she said she needed to catch a cab to make her flight. “You should be so lucky”, said someone in the studio – and suddenly they had a name for their song.6. Nick Cave was terrified when he went on Top of the Pops with KylieCave had a decades-long history of drug abuse and general bad behaviour, but he had never encountered anything like Minogue’s manic fan base when he went on Top of the Pops with her to perform their duet, Where the Wild Roses Grow, in 1995. “They were terrifying. Just these sort of monstrous, awful teenage girls. They did not like me and they did not like me to go near their princess,” he shudders, describing them as “evil people”.7. But it was Cave who convinced her to return to her pop rootsDesperate to be taken seriously, Kylie broke with Stock Aitken Waterman’s label, PWL, and signed with indie label Deconstruction. But nobody wanted an “alternative” Kylie, and her popularity nosedived. It was Cave, of all people, who convinced her to go back to pop – a change of direction that would ultimately lead to hits such as Spinning Around and Can’t Get You Out of My Head. “I’m like, ‘What the f**k are you doing?’ Indie? No one willingly wants to be indie,” recalls Cave. “But that’s not what Kylie is. Kylie is this force that is there to affect thousands and thousands and thousands of people. It’s all outward. It’s all giving. You have an enormous positive influence… the great beauty of pop music is that it is a joy machine.”8. She lacked confidence in her singingKylie was initially dismissed as a soap star who had gone above her station, and the criticisms stung and sapped her confidence. “I was insecure I was uncertain,” she remembers of her I Should Be So Lucky era. “There’s so many voices in my head... you can’t do it... you just can’t do it. It sets you back. Maybe I’m not capable. Maybe they’re right.”9. Stock Aiken Waterman had no idea how popular she wasPete Waterman might have been the hit whisperer who crafted smashes for Rick Astley and others, but he had no idea that Neighbours had made Kylie a superstar before she had even walked through the doors of PWL. He was quickly set straight – when audiences rushed to the phone lines to demand he play I Should Be So Lucky in full on his radio show. “The cream wasn’t us,” he says, “The ice cream was Neighbours and we put the cherry on top.” 10. The first funeral she attended was that of Michael HutchenceKylie Minogue at the funeral of INXS singer Michael Hutchence. Photograph: The Sydney Morning Herald She reveals that she went through “many firsts” with the INXS singer – first true love, first heartache. After his suicide in 1997, there came a more unwelcome new experience. She had never attended a funeral prior to stepping before the eyes of the world, a black veil over her face, to sit in silence as the love of her life was laid to rest. IN THIS SECTION