How the Blue Wiggle Is Making Up for Lost Time with His Daughter (Exclusive)

Anthony Field, who’s largely referred to as the Blue Wiggle within the youngsters’s musical group, by no means imagined he’d share the stage together with his daughter. Now, it is one among his best joys.

When Lucia, 21, was rising up, she was a boarding pupil on the Australian Ballet School, and Fields spent a lot of his time on the highway.

“To me, Lucia’s Life was most likely going to be the Australian Ballet or someplace ballet,” Field, 62, tells PEOPLE completely. “But COVID hit and she or he got here again to Sydney, and I received to know her.”

At the time, Field “did not even know she may sing.” Then, years later, Emma Watkins left the group, and so they wanted somebody to exchange her.

“I keep in mind I simply requested her at some point, however I by no means pushed her,” he says of his proposal for her to hitch the group. “I by no means thought she’d be a Wiggle. So I’m simply actually completely satisfied it is occurred that manner.”

Now, Field is making up for misplaced time.

“I used to be away a lot in her teenage years, and she or he was away at boarding college, so I missed out on a variety of her growth,” he says of Lucia, who joined the group in July 2022.

Adding, “And now I see her nice humorousness, her expertise and simply her compassion and love of kids. She’s an incredible child.”

Field shares three youngsters with spouse Michaela Patisteas: Lucia, Marie, 19, and Antonio, 18.

Marie has been the voice of Dorothy the Dinosaur on the present for the previous couple of years, and she or he comes on set to do a runner’s job, says Field.

“But her actual ardour is performing,” he says. Meanwhile, his son is “a giant man, and he performs guitar and drums.”

Field provides, “I do not know if The Wiggles are huge for him, however he loves music.”

Field based The Wiggles in Sydney, Australia in 1991 with Murray Cook, Jeff Fatt and Greg Page. Since then, the remainder of the founding members have moved on — however Field intends to proceed till he cannot.

“I’m so completely satisfied it labored out the way it did, and I’m so completely satisfied that I’m nonetheless doing it. And the boys, the unique boys, are at all times so enthusiastic and supportive that the Wiggles are nonetheless going,” he says.

“I’ve requested Simon, who’s been Wiggle now for 13 years, I feel, ‘Simon, if at some point comes that I’m not with it, faucet me on the shoulder and it may be time to go then,'” Field concludes. “[But] I do not see myself retiring so long as I’m nonetheless contributing.”

For extra from Anthony Field, decide up the newest subject of PEOPLE, on newsstands in all places Friday.