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- Author: Alejandro Millán Valencia
- Role, @HayFestivalCartagena
1 hour
Ruby Wax has had not one, but many distinguished careers. And in all of them it has been widely recognized and awarded.
So much so that in 2015, Queen Elizabeth II made her an Honorary Officer of the British Empire – one of the highest honors the British Crown bestows on its citizens – for her contribution to comedy and acting, as well as her contributions to raising awareness of the importance of the British Empire mental health.
Wax was born in the US and moved to the UK in the 1970s, where she studied theater and became famous for her hilarious monologues about her family and her talk shows Ruby and The Full Wax, in which she interviewed US celebrities like Madonna, Pamela Anderson and former First Lady of the Philippines Imelda Marcos.
But as she says, “her baby” was her work to bring to light and speak clearly about the depression and bipolar that she herself suffered, as well as other mental illnesses.
And that's what she did as a professor at the University of Surrey, with several books – many of them bestsellers – and shows that have been seen by thousands of people.
In his latest book, I'Not As Well As I Thought I Was, he talks about his time in a psychiatric hospital and various treatments he underwent to restore his sanity.
Wax, who is one of the guests at the Hay Festival Cartagena 2024, spoke to BBC Mundo about her multifaceted life, her fame and the torment of psychological pain.
They say that your career as a comedian begins when you realize that you can make Alan Rickman (the actor who played Professor Snape in the Harry Potter saga) smile. How is this story?
I met Alan at the Royal Shakespeare Company after spending three years at the Glasgow Academy of Dramatic Arts (Scotland), where, among other things, I dedicated myself to improving my British accent.
When he started giving me my first advice as an actress, something very interesting happened: I realized that if I told him something about my personal life – which has nothing to do with acting – I would get a few smiles from him .
He was always a very serious man, it was very difficult to make him laugh; So a laugh was like winning a prize.
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Alan Rickman, who died in 2016, had an extensive theater and film career. In addition to Harry Potter, he appeared in films such as Love Actually and Die Hard.
Alan was the one who told me that I had to try to write in the same way that I talked to him about personal topics, and most of the time I talked to him about my family.
The most surprising thing was that he told me that as soon as he wrote that he would take me on stage.
This is how my first monologues as a comedian began and a partnership began that lasted over 30 years: he directed every one of my works.
And every time I finished one, he told me it was the last one. But somehow I managed to convince him to guide me again.
What made you laugh so much about your family?
When Alan met my family and saw how dysfunctional they were, he understood that nothing was made up, that every sentence they said was so completely nonsensical that they needed no editing.
To say the least, my family is pretty crazy, which makes them a great source of inspiration for my work material.
But at the same time it has its problems because I grew up with it.
So what I've been doing all these years is, shall we say, looking for a way to escape this dysfunctionality, and I've done that not only with my work on television and in the theater, but also through my books about mental health .
I think I understood that when I wrote my first book and showed it to Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia in Star Wars) and she told me to leave only what had to do with my family and everything get out. The rest.
Throughout your career, you have been very honest and vocal about issues that are not always openly discussed, such as mental health, sexism on television, ageism…
I would say that a lot of my career was spent taking revenge on the people who told me that I would be nobody in life.
That was my path: to prove them wrong.
This is something we all do in one way or another, and I've been told this many times by many people. My parents thought my ambitions as an actress were pathetic.
I'm not a brilliant woman, but I pushed to be directed by Alan, to get into the Royal Shakespeare Company, to get on TV and do my plays.
Still, I had to put a lot of pressure on. And that was what drove me.
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Ruby Wax is one of Britain's best-known comedians and actresses.
And does this idea of revenge that leads you to the theater or television also lead you to deal with mental health problems?
It's not exactly the same.
I have always been interested in the people I talk to.
One of the things about my talk show was that I spent about ten days with the characters before I interviewed them.
So I built a relationship with them.
When the BBC took me off the air, I continued to be interested in people, but from a different perspective. I reinvented myself.
Having studied psychology in Berkeley (California) and having had a mental health crisis, I realized that I could achieve more through mindfulness, but above all I dedicated myself to understanding what happens to the brain when it breaks down or when it experiences negative emotions Experiences create situations like a crisis.
At that time, the topic was not talked about much and could sometimes be confused with esotericism.
I stuck to the facts and did everything I could to avoid suspicion because I always wanted to be taken seriously, even though I was a comedian. That's why I studied neuroscience at Oxford.
When you write about how television influenced you, you talk about “the facade.” What are you talking about?
I think that all people – because we are vulnerable – wear a mask, especially when you work in television.
And the reason you have it is because if it works, it will make you a lot of money.
The problem comes when you stay in this mask and see, for example, people in their 50s and 60s, imitating what they were in their best moments. That is the tragedy.
I interviewed famous people and began to observe this phenomenon in the personalities who participated in my program.
At first I was an observer, but I got infected and started acting the same way. I became addicted to fame.
So when I stopped being one and stopped appearing on television, when I stopped being welcomed in restaurants like I used to, when people stopped recognizing me on the subway, it was like they took the dose away from me.
That's why I like what I do now a lot more in my conversations about mental health topics.
It's much healthier to say at the end of a conversation, “Hey, that helped me, it was good for my mind” than “Hey, that was fun.”
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Wax became known for her comedic skills. Here is a scene from the comedy “Girls on Top” from the British broadcaster ITV.
They have this definition of depression: “It’s the black hole of illness where you feel helpless while your mind hammers you with blame. Your thoughts attack you as if they were little demons eating your brain to pieces. It’s very difficult to stay alive and listen.”
One of the things that I have come to understand over the years, not only in my work on these mental health issues but also through my monologues, is that many think that depression is not an illness because in some cases it comes and goes.
I understood this by listening to people.
It happened to me at the end of a show – I usually open the microphone to the audience – in which, among other things, the worst was talked about, cancer or depression. And I always tell them, “Depression is worse because you can’t see it.”
Most people may not believe this. And that hurts me a lot because it's real.
Even though it sounds very dark, that is my definition of depression. You're in a hole. There is no movement, you don't care if you get a manicure or if you fall into an abyss.
Everything you are is gone, and I don't think people understand how scary that can be.
As you say yourself: “Nobody knows who he is”…
Exactly: When you're depressed, you're not even a complete person. You don't know how to get back to where you were before you got sick. There is no ghost. Everything is dead.
The most frightening thing is that you believe the rest of your life will be like this. This is the moment when you can make the decision to end everything because it can't go on like this. It is an unbearable torture.
Even if you decide not to take your own life, the pain is still there.
And for me the psychological pain is worse. It's like someone is constantly yelling at you in your head. You start to feel like you're not good enough: “I'm not good-looking, everyone thinks I'm a fraud.”
And this, repeated endlessly, under the pressure of social networks, becomes impossible to maintain.
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The books written by Wax, full of confessions about his experiences dealing with deep depression, have become bestsellers.
You said you never imagined writing books about mental health, but you ended up being a pioneer in the field. What was this process like?
I couldn't imagine writing a book on the subject because I was afraid of getting fired. It was a taboo subject.
But something happened that made me change my mind.
I remember when I first spoke about my mental health issues I was appearing in a very well known campaign in the UK called Comic Relief.
There was my face, a familiar face, and it said: “One in four Brits suffers from mental illness.”
For years I was embarrassed by the idea that people would find out about my depression, but when I saw my face across the country I thought why not write a whole show about it.
In this way, people suffering from these diseases became my audience.
I've done several tours with the show and talking about this topic now is really like my baby, my son.
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Carrie Fisher, the actress who played Princess Leia, was also a close friend of Wax.
There's a powerful concept in your latest book: you have to move, you have to be constantly moving.
Yes, I'm constantly moving. It's what gives me oxygen.
When you are depressed, one of the characteristics is that you don't move.
I always believed that I was moving to achieve things in my life, but as I was writing my latest book, I realized that I was running away, and had been for many years.
About my family, about my illness, about the things that healed me from this illness. And so.
So you must be wondering what I'm running from.
And when you understand the answer and face it, you begin to move and get the oxygen you need to live.
We need to raise awareness. So plain and simple.
I myself was not aware of the severity of my illness. Only with the help of a psychologist was I able to decipher all this dark feeling.
Back then, I focused on making jokes about my parents and nothing more. I didn't understand this darkness and I didn't know where I was going. Not that I could be any more understanding of myself. And forgive me for many things.
When people understand that what they are experiencing happens to many people, they can understand that depression is an illness that can be treated.
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