Ruby Wax: 'I got really ill and ended up in a mental ward'

Back in the 1990s, comedian Ruby Wax was known for her fresh and candid interviews with celebrities like Donald Trump.

In the hit stage show I'm Not As Well As I Thought I Was (based on her 2023 bestseller) the 71-year-old comedian and writer opens up about a wild international adventure that was cut short by psychiatric illness.

"When I wrote the first half of the book somebody said 'This is okay but it's a travel log'. But then when I ended up in the mental ward they said 'This is a hit!'"

Wax tells Susie Ferguson she's excited about performing her show in Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland next month.

When it comes to New Zealand's beauty she doesn't hold back, declaring Auckland "the best place in the world".

"If there was a God he said 'Let's give it one more chance' and he made New Zealand."

In I'm Not As Well As I Thought I Was, Kiwi audiences will see her first on a wild international adventure to find "meaning" and then struck down by extreme mental illness.

Although Wax didn't find meaning during her stay at a psychiatric hospital, she says she did rediscover there the event which she believes has led to her "running so hard" throughout her life.

"I was locked in my house as a kid - I had no idea."

Raised in Chicago as the only child of Austrian immigrant parents who were physically abusive, Wax says everything she did growing up seemed like a disappointment.

While her mother Berta Wachs was a beautiful former 'it girl' who spoke eight languages, Wax had front teeth "that were in another time zone" and due to undiagnosed dyslexia was put in "the slow class".

"It was a cruel house, you know, and it's a miracle I survived it... I knew the only way out of there was to get a sense of humour. That was my safety gauge."

Shortly after finishing high school, Wax moved to the UK where she trained as a classical actress and worked on stage and TV productions before becoming a celebrity interviewer for the BBC in 1991.

Multiple meetings with Pamela Anderson were a highlight of this time, Wax says, and it was clear to her then the Baywatch star would become "a cool older woman".

"That's an evolved soul. She's not at all hungry for what she used to be. I think she looks happier now. Some people just evolve at a certain age. People turn into wine or vinegar. She turned into wine."

Some of her own interviews Wax can now no longer watch - such as those with Donald Trump and Bill Cosby.

"Their whole thing is humiliating women and boy, did they. But I'd stick it out because I had a show and I wasn't going to walk away or cry, which maybe that's what they wanted me to do."

Side by side on the future US president's private jet in 1996, Trump quickly soured when Wax started laughing at the idea that he wanted to be president: "I thought 'I'm with a comedian. This guy's funny!" - and promptly landed the plane to kick her off.

The real estate developer didn't know what to make of a woman who wasn't fawning over him, Wax says.

"With somebody who had a smirk on their face and wasn't taking him seriously, he just couldn't bear it."

Met at the door for her interview with Bill Cosby, Wax says that soon after the comedian put his hands around her neck and tried to choke her.

"He dragged me with his elbow around my neck into the room and made me kneel at his feet and had a toy phone that he kept calling and saying 'get her out of here' just the way Trump did."

After leaving the TV business in the early 2000s, Wax studied mindfulness at Oxford University, later writing several self-help books including Sane New World and Mindfulness Guide for Survival. In 2015, she received an OBE for services to mental health.

Depression, which Wax first experienced in childhood, isn't about being sad, she says. It's about being "completely incapable of going back to who you used to be".

"Your personality is gone and you assume - the way you do when you have the flu or whatever - that this is your new personality. And it's so horrific."

Wax says the place where she "shines" is on stage in front of a receptive audience.

This April, while talking about her experiences onstage in New Zealand, she'll also invite audience members to share their own.

"I'm happy in my body because I'm with my people … This is my happy moment because I get to meet the public."

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