Why Donald Trump made Ruby Wax sick to her stomach

Ruby Wax is an American-British broadcaster, comedian, actress, writer, and mental health campaigner. I spoke to her on Thursday.

Fitz: Congrats on your book, I Am Not as Well as I Thought I Was, which we will get to shortly. In the meantime, I am keenly aware that you have interviewed everyone from Donald Trump to the Duchess of York. Do you prefer to be the interviewer or interviewee?

RW: When it really works, you’re neither. You’re talking, you’re one, you’re having a strong chat, and it’s like being in a tennis match – the ball going back and forth.

Fitz: Fair enough. So let me send some quick serves your way. Your most famous line on your show When Ruby Wax Met… was, “Tell me the truth.” So tell me the truth on O.J. Simpson. What was your conclusion upon interviewing him?

RW: He was sort of teasing me and trying to make me push him in that direction. He didn’t say “Don’t ask me those questions.” He loved those questions.

Fitz: And, despite being found innocent of the murder of his wife, I noticed he even played up to these most horrendous allegations, by mock stabbing you with a banana. How did you feel about that?

RW: Well, I didn’t really care. Because there was a camera crew with me. So I thought “Oh, that’s good television”. But the most chilling was him suddenly reciting his “favourite poem” about a woman who was accused of the axe murder of her stepmother and father: “Lizzie Borden took an axe, And gave her mother 40 whacks/ When she saw what she had done, She gave her father 41.” He wanted me to react.

Fitz: What about interviewing Donald Trump two decades ago. You said he made you “sick to your stomach”. Why was that?

RW: He’s a scary guy. You know, I’m not the first to say that. He’s a scary guy to look in the eyes. He’s quite violent. And he hates, he hates women that he doesn’t sleep with … He’s repulsive anyway. I mean, the American people should have watched my show before they voted for him as president. Well, that wouldn’t have helped because people still love him for his vileness. They just love it.

Fitz: What about Madonna? What was she like?

RW: Cold.

Fitz: The Duchess of York?

RW: I felt sorry for her.

Fitz: I always named Bill Gates as the hardest person I ever interviewed. I had 45 minutes with him for a TV show, and could barely get a thing out of him until I raised the one subject that I had been forbidden to raise, which was the late Steve Jobs, and when I did, he smiled for the first time. Who was your most difficult interview?

RW: Bill Gates! I couldn’t get anything out of him either. I also did an interview with him on a private gig, not on TV, and he never answered a single question.

Fitz: Is there a particular Australian you’ve interviewed, or that you have felt close to over the years?

RW: Who else but Barry Humphries? He was your biggest export, your greatest genius, with his extraordinary sense of humour.

Fitz: Your on-air persona screams authenticity: that there was not one version of you for the cameras and one for after the cameras were switched off. But unbeknown to us, you were dealing with a kind of creeping depression. You said, “I’ve spent a lifetime creating a ‘front’ to give the illusion that all is well. It wasn’t and it isn’t.”

RW: Really, it was more that I had it once every five years or so. If you had a depression, you wouldn’t be able to do it, I wouldn’t be able to do TV.

Fitz: As a trained Shakespearean actor, you are no doubt more than familiar with Willie Waggledagger’s most famous line on worries: “When sorrows come/ They come not in single spies but in battalions.” Did that resonate with you, that when depression came, it came hard at you in battalions?

RW: [Quietly] Well, that’s what it is, that is the nature of the beast, if you have the real thing, and not just the blues.

Fitz: The other line that occurs to me from Shakespeare, regarding your book, is “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows”. Your book is filled with your extraordinary journey in your search for meaning, and then entering the world of depression, meeting very strange people in strange situations…

RW: Yes, a lot of people wanted to say, especially after COVID lockdown, “let’s see what’s out there”. And I did that journey, and while on it, I happened to have a disease that kicked in for the first time in 12 years. So it’s not with me all the time. I wasn’t planning on writing about depression. It just happened while I was on the journey.

Fitz: I was shocked to read some of the details of your childhood in America’s Midwest, and that your own parents more or less tried to lock you up as a little girl, and you’ve been fleeing ever since.

RW: Yeah, I mean, they did lock me in. So that was interesting to find out, when … I [tried some therapies], that I hadn’t tried before. And yeah, I didn’t realise that at my core, I still feared being locked in, and it really answered a lot of questions for me as to why I’m always running.

Fitz: Your memoir opens in a psychiatric unit, where you’re undergoing something called “transcranial magnetic stimulation”. And you said, “it feels like Woody Woodpecker and his cartoon pals are gang banging in my head.”

RW: That’s what it felt like! Yeah, but I said it wasn’t painful. Because if you’ve had Botox, it’s nothing. But they said if you have 20 sessions, it’s a new thing. It’s transcranial with magnets, rather than electricity. So there’s no side effects … we hope.

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Fitz: So whereabouts in your journey, your quest for meaning, did the depression kick in? I am surprised it was not in the month-long silent retreat that you went to at one point.

RW: No, that was hilarious. I won’t go on with what happened but that one worked, in a way. There’s a moment where your mind gives up. It’s just exhausted from shutting up for that long and eventually goes, “Oh, OK, you win”. And it does shut up. And everything’s different. You can taste food for the first time, and you can watch nature and be fascinated by the smallest things, like ants. So something does happen to you, and you can hear birds, and enjoy them. I studied mindfulness at Oxford, so I get the benefits on the scientific level. But doing a month, boy, [it’s hard to] hold up. You got to hold your sanity down. But I wouldn’t suggest it for the normal person. It’s a killer. It’s really a killer.

Fitz: So where were you on your journey, when the battalions came? What were you doing when the depression suddenly came knocking?

RW: Well, let me just say it had nothing to do with the situation. But I was at a Christian monastery and there was a nun like Mrs Doubtfire and she was taking care of me. And gradually, I thought, “Did they give me a date rape drug?” because there’s a sensation that comes to you when you’re slightly getting depressed, that feels like you’re stoned. So at first, I thought, “Wait, you know, am I being possessed in a monastery?” And then gradually, I realised because I hadn’t had it in 12 years, you know, it’s like, suddenly you go, “Oh, yeah, this is what it is.” And then I had to get out of there. So I had to have one of the brethren get me to a train station fast. But before that, I loved the whole thing. I loved being part of the congregation because I was looking for meaning. I was looking for community. And a lot of times, I found it.

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Fitz: You said you spent “six weeks in a mental ward version of Fawlty Towers”. Was that after the monastery?

RW: Yeah. It was funny and it wasn’t funny. I mean, that’s what I love. It was One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but it’s dark too. I mean, it’s dark because mental illness hurts like hell, and it’s not to be taken lightly. But, you know, I mean, I’m not going to write a book that was all about poor me, would you buy it?

Fitz: No. But, that’s interesting. You’re on the Sunday Times bestseller list, and The Guardian says you have “a miraculous ability to write about depression without being depressing.” What was your approach to writing about such a depressing subject in such a manner?

RW: Well, Carrie Fisher used to do it too, and she’s my goddess. I’ve got a thing for words and if you spin it, when you’re funny, you’re funny, and when you’re dark, you’re dark. People go along with the roller coaster ride. I never laugh at my people, I describe them. You know, like meeting the woman down the hallway, who kept going on about (suddenly going into a posh English accent) “frozen prawns and all these foxes were coming into her house and taking the frozen prawns, and she was sending her son to Eton. So she put vegan food outside, but the foxes wouldn’t take the vegan food and they kept coming into her house and taking the frozen prawns.” Well, I’m not making it up. You know, it’s delicious. And you know, clearly I love her. So half the book is the search for meaning, and half of it is in a mental ward, so you’re getting a “two-fer”.

Fitz: Thank you for your time. It’s been a delight. Your final words of advice for those in Australia who might be reading this and suffering depression? What are the best words of solace you know to grip you in the silent watch of the night, in the 3am of the soul?

RW: Shakespeare: “This too shall pass.”

Quote of the Week

“Over 60 women whom I know get menstrual-type cramps when they are just seated next to vaccinated women for an hour or so, i.e. at a lecture or play, or when they stay in hotels where vaccinated women have slept.” – Dr Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth, now leading anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist. The tweet was not satire. She was serious.

Joke of the week

My boss was honest with me today. He pulled up to work with his sweet new car and I complimented him on it. He replied, “Well, if you work hard, set goals, stay determined and put in long hours, I can get an even better one next year.”

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