Once known for being an outrageous interviewer of celebrities such as Madonna and Donald Trump, American comedienne-turned-mental-health campaigner Ruby is thoughtful, bright and naturally very funny.
After suffering from depression for most of her life and eventually suffering a breakdown, Ruby quit her comedy career to study psychology – earning a Master’s degree from Oxford University. Since then Ruby’s mission has been to figure out what’s happening in our brains to cause depression – in her case – and general negativity in everybody and what we can do about it.
“I’m interested in how the human mind works because even if you don’t have a mental health problem like I do, you’re bound to have critical thoughts and say to yourself, ‘I’m not good enough’.”
But it’s not our fault, she says – it’s simply evolution. Ruby believes humans’ brains have not evolved fast enough to cope with the onslaught of 21st Century life. “Most of our negative thoughts are a holdover from when we were cavemen and life was fraught with danger,” she says. “Over millions of years these thoughts became internalised. This way of thinking is in our DNA.” In other words, she says, the brain is like Velcro attracting negative thoughts and Teflon repelling positive ones.
Ruby's latest book
In her new book, 'I’m Not as Well as I Thought I Was', Ruby is very honest and open in her own humourous way about her mental health struggles in the last year.
In 2022, Ruby was admitted to a mental institution in London once she began to feel like she wanted her life to stop. During this difficult time, she began to write this book, talking about times when she felt she was putting on a front, to her family history of mental illness and its impact on her.
This book is all about staying sane in the chaotic world we find ourselves in today and how depression can sneak up on you at the most unpredictable of times. Ruby hopes this book will help you feel less alone in those dark moments and hopefully provide some light in the future.
Ruby's new show Castaway
If you haven't already started watching Ruby's latest show Castaway, we can't recommend it enough. Airing Sunday's on Channel 5, it sees 70-year-old Ruby living alone on a desert island in Madagascar for ten days.
During the first episode, she opened up about her own personal mental health battles, sharing how, 'mental health people are survivors because we know what it's like to be alone'.
Ruby on why Christmas is a difficult time
One time of year when our mental health can suffer the most is around Christmas time, and Ruby thinks it’s down to the pressure to feel happy.
“People are put under that pressure from advertising or tradition and you’re supposed to be happy, like Happy birthday, or Happy New Year. In this environment, if you're not feeling ok, you feel even more guilty.”
Each year, Ruby heads to Cape Town in South Africa over the Christmas period to help work in a soup kitchen to escape Christmas here and give back to the community.
“I'm lucky that I can do that. And you don't see many Santas there!”
Being a comedian, it’s no surprise that Ruby believes many of us escape through comedy at Christmas, whether it’s joking at the dinner table or watching your favourite comedy show on TV, but worries that this is brushing over our true feelings.
“I think people watch comedies over Christmas because it's really good for your health. But when the show's over, and the family is still not getting along, or there's anxiety, or there's trouble, you can't watch TV forever.”
“To me, mental health is the next pandemic, and especially with kids. If we don't take that seriously, then it doesn't matter how well we do in the economy. Too many people are missing an action.”
Around this time of year more than ever, Ruby’s encouraging us to speak to those who we sense might be struggling with their mental health and equally, open up about our own too.
"We were born with compassion and sensitivity, but we were too busy to use it. Everybody's busy. It's like now that's a badge of honour, like you've won an award. So just come out from behind that. Think about your weather condition and maybe find somebody who you feel might be the same and start talking."
Or if you're really in trouble and you see it's a close friend, you might say “Do you really want to know?” Or you might say “you want to know from one to 10? Ten being the worst. I'm at nine…” that probably opens the conversation.
"Also, look them in the eye. That's one thing we don't do, so if you're asking “how are you?”, say it slowly and look in their eye. And notice every flicker, notice every feeling and you'll see it if you really look."
Walkers has partnered with Ruby Wax, to help challenge the nation to give up the F*** word this Christmas and beyond in support of mental wellbeing. The campaign forms part of the snack brand’s ongoing partnership with Comic Relief. Walkers has pledged a £2 Million donation to the charity by the end of 2022, to support mental wellbeing programs across the UK.
Ruby's early life
Ruby’s childhood was traumatic by any standards. Her parents – Jewish immigrants who escaped Austria just before the war, but whose families perished – were traumatised themselves. They were cruel to their only child.
“I got D grades in high school,” says Ruby, who grew up outside Chicago. “I got into university [in the US to study psychology], but it wasn’t that easy because I was traumatised. I couldn’t focus or I was dumb, one or the other.”
She later embarked on a career in show business, but now she has come full circle. “I started where I left off at age 16 when I was shut down. I suddenly became curious about science, of all things.
“Now I know about things such as neuroplasticity (the ability of the brain to undergo biological changes) and that the brain doesn’t automatically decline as fast as you think it does,” she laughs.
When Ruby Wax Met...
As successful as her second career has been, Ruby admits she’s sad her previous job as a celebrity interviewer ended in 2005 when ‘the phone stopped ringing’.
She confesses she can’t watch Louis Theroux’s TV series, which are similar in format to those she made in the Nineties and early Noughties; she feels he replaced her.
With her typical honesty, she adds: “Then again this career happened. Certainly, if I wasn’t doing anything I’d be the most bitter, angry person – I really would.”
Ruby's interviews in the 90s were some of the most talked-about shows on TV. These sensational series have never been repeated, and Ruby has never watched them back - until now in a new series for BBC.
Ruby walks viewers through the genesis of her boundary-busting celebrity interview technique, originating in her studio The Full Wax, which crossed genres and created a fearless new form of entertainment.
The show revisits early guests such as Donald Trump, Carrie Fisher, Goldie Hawn and Tom Hanks.
Ruby and mindfulness
What’s helped Ruby counter negativity is mindfulness, where you train yourself to become aware of your thoughts and calm stress hormones.
“I get up and I do about 45 minutes a day, but it’s not for everybody,” says Ruby. “You could do a couple minutes a day and it’s the same thing. It’s just what works for me.” She’s also on medication to help with depression, although she still suffers depressive episodes.
Lockdown made Ruby even more determined to change her outlook.
“I realised we do have a choice on what we focus on,” she says. “You can either start watching the death toll and getting into ‘the fear of the fear’, or you can change your mindset. Yes, the world can be scary, but you don’t have to make it scarier.”
Ruby scoffs at the ideas we can be too old to change – and she’s a poster girl for that notion.
At the age of 57, her TV career on the wane, Ruby reinvented herself by earning a Master’s degree in mindfulness and cognitive psychology and kick-starting a career as a mental health activist, author and performer. “I can’t tell you how it happened; everything is a surprise,” she says.
Ruby Wax's life lessons
The best thing about ageing...
"...is getting smarter. I’d say I’m much more liberated and much smarter than I used to be. I can see both sides of an argument rather than becoming entrenched. I’m still me, though – even though I study mindfulness I still have a quick temper because I drive myself so much. I did all-nighters finishing my latest book, A Mindfulness Guide For Survival."
Silence has its benefits
"It might surprise readers, given how chatty I am, that I go to a lot of silent retreats. It’s not particularly relaxing not to speak, but I find retreats inspiring and interesting. There’s something profound that happens when you start to tune into your senses rather than your thoughts. You get more sensation: food tastes better, colours are more vivid and you can start to hear your mind. You get space between your thoughts. You quite like yourself when you leave and appreciate who you are."
Fame was like a drug
"You get in all the good restaurants and upgraded on flights and hotel rooms. You get freebies such as make-up and clothes. It’s great. But once it’s taken away – which happened to me when the phone stopped ringing for TV jobs – it’s like coming off a drug and a lot of people can’t take it. It’s painful. Nobody likes losing a job. But you become more human as an ordinary person. You find yourself again."
Mentors are magical
"The late great Alan Rickman taught me everything I know. I met him at the Royal Shakespeare Company in the Eighties and we became very close friends. He told me to write and for 30 years he directed all my solo projects. He taught me how to do comedy. He said, ‘The audience is interested in what you have to say, so don’t try to make them love you. Make them come to you rather than pushing it on them.’ I still hear his voice and his notes when I perform."
The secret of a happy marriage...
"...don’t see each other too much! My husband [comedy director and producer Ed Bye, whom Ruby married in 1988] and I have different lifestyles: he does his TV shows and movies, I do my research into mindfulness, write books and give talks. We’re a good team and he’s very supportive. We both have our own interests – it’s boring when you start doing all the same things. He’s happy that I have a view."
Ruby's advice for her 18-year-old self
"It’s never too late to reinvent yourself. When I lost my television work I went to university to study psychology and counselling because I thought it would give me something to do and I was always interested in the mind. Then I got into Oxford [to study mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, graduating in 2013] and relaunched myself as a writer and speaker on mental health. We live so long, there’s time for reinvention. Fifty is the new 30!"
Mindfulness Guide for Survival by Ruby Wax is out now.