Australian icon Magda Szubanski has revealed she received late night texts from Shane Warne, admitting she fell under the spell of the cricketing great.
Szubanski, who met the sporting legend on the set of Kath and Kim, paid tribute to Warne who died of a suspected heart attack in Thailand late Friday evening.
“I am still completely shocked,” she told Weekend Today.
“I think it is very hard to digest something like that with someone who is so very alive and got that incredible life force.
“When it is just snuffed out so suddenly like that I think we all cognitively can’t even really comprehend it.”
Szubanski’s character Sharon Strzelecki was a megafan of the leg-spinner, and married a Shane Warne impersonator Wayne (played by the real Warne) on the show.
She said was struck by Warne’s sweetness despite the narrative that surrounded him at the time.
“I went, ‘Oh wow, I get that charm. I mean, I’m a gay lady but I can see the charm,” Szubanski added.
“It wasn‘t a bunged on charm. It was just a thoughtfulness and sweetness and a kind of charisma is something that you can’t manufacture.
“It is just who you are as a person — that radiated out of him.”
She added while they weren’t besties she was fond of the sporting icon.
“We would be in touch every now and then. I did receive some late-night texts from Shane Warne. I must say.“
“We did have an ongoing connection and I was just very, very fond of him and the way he was such a xjmtzywgood sport. He was a great sportsman but he was also a great sport.”
Following the news of his death on Saturday, Szubanski threw back the curtain on the episode featuring Warne himself.
Sharing a series of photos from the episode, she wrote of the bond they created during filming.
“He played along with our shenanigans and we had loads of fun,” adding: “He was a great pasher!”
“But mostly I remember how he spoke with such great love and pride of his beautiful kids … This is a shocking loss for our nation and for the cricketing world … And poor Sharon has lost her hero and the love of her life.
“But right now my heart is with his family and his friends – and most especially with his beautiful children Jackson Summer and Brooke whom he loved so very very much.”
Warne died aged 52 of a suspected heart attack while on holiday in Thailand on Friday, his management confirmed overnight.
