Wayne Brady is coming clean about being "human" and not always being happy. The Let's Make a Deal host and Whose Line Is It Anyway? comedian admits he suffers from depression. In an exclusive interview with Entertainment Tonight, Wayne Brady admits to secretly battling depression for years, and now he's willing to talk about it, especially now that more and more celebrities are taking a stand.
As he says during the interview,
Having a bad day is one thing, having a bad week is another, having a bad life ... You don't want to move, you can't move in the darkness. You're like, "I am just going to sit right here and I want to wallow in this. As much as it hurts, I am going to sit right here because this is what I deserve. This is what I deserve, so I am going to sit here because I am that horrible of a person."
Last June on his 42nd birthday, Brady hit rock bottom and decided it was time to make a change. What made him decide to pull himself out from the darkness? In addition to wanting to become healthier for himself, his daughter, his friends, and his family, after learning of Robin Williams' suicide in August and his battle with mental illness, Brady knew he had to do something.
[Robin Williams] made all these people feel great. And at the same time, knowing that he had this sense of ... what I make up in my mind, this low sense of self-worth, of belonging, of loneliness, of pain that all the money in the world can't cure, all the accolades and awards, and all the love from people all over the world ... all that love could still not stop that man from saying, "I am in so much pain."
The actor wants others to not be afraid to admit their depression, especially those in Hollywood. He feels there is a double standard with coming clean about depression vs. admitting to a drug problem. "Nobody wants to out themselves so to speak, or if they out themselves, it's in a very — I hate to say it — Hollywood way," he says. "It's actually cool to go into rehab for some people ... But if someone says, 'I'm clinically depressed,' that sounds like someone's making something up. It's like, 'Psst, you're not depressed.'"
Currently, Brady is on the road to recovery and says that while it took him some time to make himself decide to do something about his depression, admitting it was a huge step in itself: "Just to admit that you are feeling this way is a huge step. To claim that, to say, 'Why do I feel dark? Why do I feel unhappy? Let me do something about this.'"
It takes a lot of courage to reveal to the entire world that you aren't this happy-go-lucky person, and that you do indeed suffer from darkness. In my eyes, Brady just became a big role model for anyone and everyone suffering from any form of mental illness.
