The keen sense of planning and organization that television host Anna Wallner demonstrates in her W network TV shows may have developed during her high school years. The Toronto native carefully managed her workload to graduate a year early and earn the Ontario Scholar distinction for her high marks.
“I had no idea what I was going to do, but I don’t remember feeling any pressure to decide at the time,” says Wallner, who attended Don Mills Collegiate Institute. “I felt like my teachers and parents were really good about encouraging me to take subjects that interested me.”
Shortly after graduating, the Toronto native moved across the country to attend the University of British Columbia and then packed her bags once more to head all the way east to Halifax for her master’s degree in journalism.
Wallner initially wanted to be a war correspondent and was a reporter for Global News in Vancouver in 1994. But eventually her interests shifted course and she launched the Shopping Bags, Anna & Kristina’s Grocery Bag and Anna & Kristina’s Beauty Call shows with her long-time friend and co-host, Kristina Matistic.
“It’s funny, when I see myself on TV, I see my mother,” says Wallner. “My mother was a caterer [when I was] growing up, so she was definitely my earliest influence in terms of trying new things. She could take the simplest thing and make it fancy, and I remember being so impressed by that.”
Although she has settled down in Vancouver, Wallner flies to Toronto several times a year to visit her mother and other family members, many of who still live in the Bayview neighbourhood.
“I love [it there]. A lot of cool people came from [the area],” says Wallner. “I think it was an amazing place, growing up, and I feel very fortunate.”
But flights back to Toronto may be fewer now that Wallner and her co-host, Matistic, are preparing to launch a new television series that will take them to exotic places around the world.
“I can’t say what it is, but it’s certainly high drama,” says Wallner, who has also been busy revamping the television duo’s website into an online lifestyle magazine. “It’s a spinoff of our cooking show. It focuses on food, but so much more than food. It takes us right out of our element in every way.”