The Irish director of Kylie Minogue’s hit documentary has said he ‘didn’t know’ the superstar would reveal her second cancer diagnosis on the series.

Emmy and BAFTA award-winning director, Michael Harte, was left just as shocked as the public when the Australian singer revealed during her new self-titled Netflix documentary that she was diagnosed with cancer again in 2021.

The Loco-Motion hitmaker decided to keep the news to herself, admitting she struggled to ‘find the right time’ to announce her illness during the success of her Grammy-winning hit, Padam Padam.

Michael – who directed Netflix’s The Deepest Breath, Beckham and Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie – opened up about the first time she told him and his team while they discussed the meaning behind some of her songs.

Speaking to The Irish Mail on Sunday, Michael said: ‘I had no clue. They talked about certain songs had certain meanings to them that the audience don’t know about.

‘I didn’t know what song someone was talking about, and then she talked about the song ‘Story’ and what it meant, and just completely opened up, and there was, you know, one person, one of one of her colleagues in the recording studio, hadn’t heard it either on the day, because she (Kylie) says it in the documentary, she points and says, “You didn’t even know this”.’

But Michael, who is from Letterkenny in Donegal, admitted he almost turned down the opportunity to visit Kylie in the recording studio that and almost miss the moment – because he felt they had enough material.

‘The truth is, so I’m an Editor as well. I’ve edited this. So I was editing as I was kind of shooting, I was doing both, I was jumping between the two, which you know was difficult, but very satisfying.

‘I had got to a point in the project where, and Kylie had given us some amazing interviews, and I felt like we had a lot of depth in the film, and I had kind of structured a three part series in the edit, and I thought we’re kind of done, and we’re pretty close to finished.

‘And she texted me one day out of the blue and said, “Look, I’m going to record some Christmas music. Do you want to come into the studio and hang out?”

‘And I was like, “Man, we’re done.” Like, I don’t know if we even had the budget to continue, because I had bought us two years, and subsequently it turned out that one of the songs she sang on that day was her first Christmas number one, and I remember thinking we’re never going to finish this film – stop making hits,’ he said laughing.

‘However, so when I got there, we were recording, and as we were recording, I remember thinking, this is nice stuff. I’m not sure what we’ll use it for. And then the conversation (about her cancer) started.’

In the documentary, Kylie said: ‘My second cancer diagnosis was in early 2021. I was able to keep that to myself. Not like the first time.

‘Thankfully, I got through it, again, and all is well. Hey, who knows what’s around the corner, but pop music nurtures me… my passion for music is greater than ever.

‘I don’t feel obliged to tell the world, and actually I just couldn’t at the time because I was just a shell of a person,’ said the pint-size 57-year-old.

‘I didn’t want to leave the house again at one point. Padam Padam opened so many doors for me but on the inside I knew that cancer wasn’t just a blip in my life.

‘And I really just wanted to say what happened so I can let go of it. I’d sit through interviews and every opportunity I thought, “now’s the time”, but I kept it to myself,’ she said in the three-part series.

He said Kylie revealing her second cancer battle was ‘all very authentic’ in the documentary.

But he said they asked Kylie if she wanted to consider taking out the footage.

‘She says that she didn’t want to just do this just for effect. So we took time, and our amazing producer, John Bastick, who, regardless of the schedule and regardless of budget, you know, understood how important this moment was, and said, “take your time, think about it, we’ll talk to Netflix and say we’re not finished, and we may have more material.”

‘And so we took a took a lot longer to finish the film, and I think, rightly so, and out of respect for her, because it’s a real moment for her to talk about that.’

Michael also opened up the first moment he met the global icon- joking at how late the singer was when they were due to meet at LA’s Chateau Marmont.

He joked that he went from feeling ‘really nervous’ to ‘p***ed off’ while he waited for Kylie.

‘She hates me saying that, because she thinks it’s not true, but I remember I went from being very nervous to just get p***ed off, just because it made me more nervous, because it was a bit surreal.’

But he said regardless of how late she was – or wasn’t – he said the singer ‘completely disarms you’ when you meet her.

‘If you ever meet Kylie very, very, very quickly, she completely disarms you with just charm, and you know she’s not what you would expect from somebody who’s had such a successful career in the limelight for so long.

‘I think probably the reason that she’s been in the limelight for so long is because of the way she is, and she has a cracking sense of humour. I found that in my life is that the people who take themselves very seriously, I struggle to work with.’

But Michael is his own worst critic and on the night the series premiered in London earlier this week, he ran off to the green room to instead watch the football.

‘I didn’t watch it. I went to the green room, and I watched the Arsenal-Burnley match the first half.

‘Kylie knocked on the door, and we’re like, all right, we’ve got to go on stage. I’ve never watched it back.’

Asked if Michael and Kylie are lifelong fans, he added with a smile: ‘You’ll have to ask her.’

‘But what we would do is we would keep in touch by WhatsApp, and we would text back and forth, and more often than not, it was basically sending each other silly memes, and she would send the archive every so often, and every so often she’d say, “How’s it going?”, and I’d say, “How’s what going?”

‘The further we got into the project, when we became more comfortable with each other, we really clicked, as well, I think we did anyway, as pals, or not even necessarily pals, but we just became very, very comfortable with each other, and we just trusted each other.’