“I usually pay for cake, so it’s exciting to be paid to be around cake for a change,” The Great Australian Bake Off star Natalie Tran declared with her trademark humour as she prepared to co-host the franchise’s sixth season back in 2023.
At the time she was new to the gig, speaking to Refinery 29 as she looked ahead to a stellar series, hosting alongside fellow comedian Cal Wilson.
Tragically, Cal would die later that same year, aged 53, from a rare and aggressive form of cancer, and the loss hit Natalie and the rest of the cast hard.
“I think, like anyone who had the pleasure of knowing Cal, I’m devastated. I don’t think you could find a single person who would have anything bad to say about her,” the star recalled in an emotional interview with The Project. “She was a beautiful person, so kind and giving and funny.”
“She was a cheerleader for every single person who worked with her and we all loved her very much.”
With the blessing of Cal’s family, the seventh season of The Great Australian Bake Off would go on to be aired, showing Cal making her final appearance across four episodes.
Why is Natalie Tran famous?
Since then, Natalie has continued to be one of the faces of The Great Australian Bake Off, with the 2025 season seeing much-loved comedian Tom Walker joining her for co-hosting duties.
The hosting line-up has certainly changed over the years, with British cook Rachel Khoo and Australian pastry chef Darren Purchese replacing former judges Maggie Beer and Matt Moran. Indeed, the contestants have become more diverse too – something that Natalie, the daughter of refugees who came to Australia from Vietnam in 1981, welcomed.
“I grew up in the western suburbs, and I think seeing any kind of diversity is very normal. I think to not see it is actually abnormal,” Natalie told Refinery 29. “So, honestly, seeing a mix of people is very comforting. I think if I were ever on a show and didn’t see that, I’d be very uncomfortable.”
Is Natalie Tran a model?
Natalie’s time on The Great Australian Bake Off wasn’t her only TV appearance.
While the star has never been a model, she made her acting debut in the Netflix teen drama Heartbreak High in 2002.
What did Natalie Tran do?
But Natalie first came to the public’s attention as a YouTuber, thanks to her popular “CommunityChannel” account, where she offered a “combination of monologue and sketches” that focussed on the “humorous aspects of everyday life”.
“YouTube was so different back then,” Natalie told Refinery 29 about its launch back in 2006. “I feel very close to most of the people who I’ve met who say, ‘I used to watch you’, because I guess we shared something… it was a bit more of a community at the time.”
Why did Natalie Tran quit YouTube?
The popular appeal of Natalie’s YouTube comedy skits led the channel to amass a whopping 1.77 million subscribers. By 2009 Natalie was Australia’s most‑subscribed YouTuber and she ranked among the top global creators by 2010.
But the success came at a cost and, beneath the laughs, Natalie was struggling with a very personal battle.
In 2016 Natalie stopped posting routinely to her YouTube channel and in an interview with the late broadcaster Quentin Kenihan, on his show ‘Big’ in 2019, she opened up about the shock reason why she quit.
“I have OCD and it kind of… hit a crescendo when I turned 30 and it rendered me kind of useless, and I wasn’t in a great head space,” she told him. “It totally consumed my life for a good year and a half.”
“I have a problem where I think that things are contaminated and dirty,” Natalie continued, “and so it got to a point when I was 30 where I just felt like everything around me was contaminated and every person was contaminated and there were no safe spaces except for my bedroom and the bathroom, and that was pretty much it.
“The living room was off-limits… It was a very weird time in my life where I just felt like everything was untouchable.”
Natalie described the experience as a “pretty horrible reality”.
“It completely consumed my mind. It wasn’t a very great existence,” she said, adding that for a “good few months” she didn’t leave her apartment and was only eating “once a day”.
“I went to seek help a few months in and then I found it really confronting,” the star admitted. “It wasn’t until my partner had a really bad experience with me one day and I realised that my behaviour was impacting his world that I went back to go back to the doctors.”
Natalie saw a psychiatrist and a psychologist and gradually she turned a corner, starting to go for evening walks and increasing her social interactions from there.
It wasn’t easy though, with the star struggling initially with leaving the house each day.
The fact that, six years on, she’s gracing TV screens across the country as a host on The Great Australian Bake Off really is an incredible testament to her resilience.
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