Jackson Warne has given his first interview since his father’s death in March 2022.
In an emotional interview for Nova Podcast’s Head Game, he spoke with host Ant Middleton about losing his dad at the young age of 22.
Jackson revealed that he learned of his dad’s death through a phone call, then “just sat in silence for hours”.
Legendary Aussie cricketer Shane Warne tragically died from a suspected heart attack on March 4 last year, at the age of 52, after being found unresponsive in a villa in Thailand where he was staying with friends.
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Jackson says that after getting the phone call about his dad, his life “just completely flipped upside down”.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to probably forget where I was or what I was doing.”
“Because hang on. Who am I going to ask for advice now? You’re telling me I can never see him ever again?,” he said.
The now-24-year-old says that it was one of his dad’s friends who was with him in Thailand who called to deliver the news.
He was with his mum, girlfriend, and sister when the phone rang. “I still very vividly remember seeing my phone, and who was calling. I thought, ‘Hang on, he’s with my dad. Very weird that he would be calling me, not my dad. So I’ll answer it,” he told Middleton.
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Jackson revealed that he still holds onto hope that one day he’ll be reunited with his dad, no matter how farfetched that sounds.
“I’m still convinced – and it might sound crazy… that I’ll at least have one conversation with my dad again. I don’t know whether it will be in a dream, or somewhere,” he said.
“Because there’s no way I won’t be able to talk to him about poker or Saint Kilda football club, or any of the hobbies that we used to do all the time. There’s no way I won’t be able to talk to him about it.”
Shortly after his father’s death, Jackson shared a heartbreaking tribute to Instagram, calling the cricketer “truly the best father and best mate anyone could’ve asked for”.
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https://www.instagram.com/p/CN9fvTIlaqb
This marks the first time Jackson has spoken publicly about his father’s death, telling Middleton that he’s felt too emotional to do so until now.
“Why am I avoiding all of this?,” he says he eventually asked himself. “Why am I not wanting to talk about it? Why is it still raw?”
Jackson explains that he realised that this was his own way of avoiding the truth about his father’s death.
“Could this be a chance for me to get out of my comfort zone and actually learn and help people?”
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“One thing I’ve tried to do ever since dad passed is help people,” he shared on the podcast.
“This year I’m doing no drinking. And I’m 10 months in, and I’ve got two months ago. But I just wanted to show people that when you go through something traumatic, instead of going to the left, which is drugs and alcohol, you actually just go to the right, which is no alcohol, no drugs, and just health and fitness.”
Last year, Jackson shared a post to Instagram talking about how the death of his father motivated him to lean into healthy habits to get through the shock.
“It could be helping people, someone else just might have lost their dad or lost their mum, you know, a few weeks ago, or maybe even today and they go, how do I cope?
“And I hope if they see me and see how I’m going, they go if Jackson could do it, I can do it.”