Russell Brand: ‘I don’t regret being married to Katy at all’
Russell Brand has been reincarnated. Father, husband and now feminist, Celia Walden meets him to discuss his road to recovery
‘I HAVE NEVER BEEN happier in my entire life,’ announces Russell Brand half an hour into our chat. And for a minute the 42-yearold looks dizzied by this fact. ‘I mean I literally get home every day and I just say, “Thank God”,’ he goes on, first in an exalted whisper and then in a panto foghorn which echoes through the empty photographic studio we’ve just shot his Grazia photos in: ‘Thank God! And you know why? Because coming home every day feels like freedom.’
This is not how most men would describe coming home to a 10-month-old, but Brand has never been most men and is in a state of newly wedded bliss, having married the mother of his child – the 30-year-old Scottish lifestyle blogger Laura Gallacher – last month. He is also so addiction-, compulsion- and sin-free right now that the man is practically levitating at his own goodness. Because, of course, the heroin and the shagging we all knew about, but it turns out that there were subsidiary addictions: celebrity, power, TV, porn, negativity – even Penguin biscuits. Yes, left to his own devices, the Essex-born comedian, actor, activist and all round provocateur could chow through wholesale-sized crates of the things. Until he realised that the 12-Step Program he used to get sober 14 and a half years ago worked for all of those dependencies – and decided to share that epiphany with the world in his new self-help book, Recovery: Freedom From Our Addictions.
Whether Brand is a man you would seek life guidance from is a question he sneaks in first, in the foreword. But whatever you think of him or his politics (‘and no of course I don’t really think I fucked up the election,’ he says of his
infamous interview with Ed Miliband broadcast on his Trews show in 2015, ‘because I don’t have that kind of influence and power – but I do think I took the temperature correctly’), Brand’s credentials are in his experience.
Raised by his mother, who contracted uterine cancer when he was eight, he suffered from bulimia and ADHD as a child, started taking drugs as a teen (which resulted in him being thrown out of the Italia Conti drama school) and moved on to the hard stuff – propelled by fame and fortune – in his late twenties. A sexually prolific period followed, during which he slept with Kate Moss, Courtney Love and pretty much any woman who could nod. ‘The reason it’s been difficult for me,’ he explains, ‘is that most of the behaviours I found myself indulging in are in their own way lionized: eating Penguin biscuits, not a big deal; watching TV – you’re supposed to watch TV; taking drugs – cool! If you’re from the strand of self-identification that I’m in, it’s not disgusting and dirty: it’s well cool. And sleeping with lots of people, making money and getting famous – all these things are endorsed. But for me at least, they’re not healthy.’
Usually when you’re sent to interview a new man you’d rather be sitting down with the old one, but Brand still has the same swaggering allure as he did when I last interviewed him seven years ago, the same ability to stuff a whole thesaurus into a single sentence (why use one adjective when 10 will do?), and the unsettling knack of staring you right in the eye – something that has fluttered a few women’s stomachs over the years. He’s less excitable than he was, prone to slightly baffling spiritualisms, and very touching both on the subject of his new wife – whom he married in front of a hundred guests including Noel Gallagher, Jonathan Ross, David Baddiel and Fearne Cotton, before leaving the church ceremony by paddle steamer – and his little girl, Mabel.
‘I wouldn’t have been able to be a father without having done the program, because I couldn’t have been in a relationship that was a suitable environment for a child,’ he tells me. ‘And the advantage of being a long time clean and the age that I am is that I realise how significant and profound having a child is. Which is not to say that I’m in a state of constant reverie and wonder and don’t sometimes have moments where the baby’s under one arm and the phone is in the other… And, of course it does still feel slightly carnivalesque when I’m out with her. She drops two social classes immediately because she’s always just in a nappy with a bottle. But what’s the point of putting clothes on her? She doesn’t need to be ornamented. And anyway, she doesn’t like tops being put on over her head.’ Who does? ‘Exactly.’ Can he do the one-handed nappy change yet? ‘People do it one-handed?’ he stares at me, aghast. ‘But how do you get it out the back – the nappy, I mean?’
Once I’ve laid out the logistics Brand bows and says, ‘Well, anyway the moment of the birth and every subsequent day has been extraordinary.’ Ah yes. The birth. Thanks to Brand’s descriptive powers and the 11 pages dedicated to Mabel’s arrival, I feel I was there. Did Laura mind all that forensic detail? ‘Well I always give her the absolute right of veto,’ he grins. ‘And I talk about the birth in my stand-up shows, although there it’s more about explosion, crudity and lewdness, rather than the beauty and connection I wanted to highlight in the book.’
The 12 Steps may have made Brand realise that, as he puts it, the world ‘is not a theme park for my dick’ but it was being a father that made marriage and monogamy so important to him. ‘It’s funny because marriage is such an external thing but I do think it’s good and it matters.’ Although he and first wife Katy Perry have been estranged since 2012, when the pair divorced after 14 months, he retains good memories of his first marriage. ‘It was a very important and lovely time in my life. I don’t regret being married to Katy at all. I have very positive feelings about that whole experience and Katy is an extraordinary woman.’ I notice he’s still got the tattoo on his arm (‘Go with the flow’ in Sanskrit) he and Katy both had done. ‘Of course I’m going to keep it,’ he flings back, affronted, when I ask whether he might have it removed. And could he see a day when they would be friends? ‘Oh yeah, I hope so. I’m willing and open for reconciliation, any kind. Because if we can’t overcome our relatively trivial personal disputes in this world, what hope is there for us?’
Hope is something the 12 Steps, Laura and Mabel have given Brand in spades. Has having a girl made him a feminist? ‘It would have been a bit rich to call myself a feminist before, but having Mabel has made me one in a very simple way. I couldn’t consider the idea of being a woman before and now I can. And the thought that my daughter would be restricted, held down in any way or disqualified on the basis of her gender is one I really don’t care for at all.’ But what happens in 14 years’ time when a young Russell Brand-type turns up at his door and asks for Mabel? ‘Well he won’t be a Russell Brand-type character because Mabel will have spent the 14 years in between being very well trained in male psychology and the appropriate selection of partners,’ he frowns. Then Brand’s face brightens, and in the most genuine voice I’ve ever heard him use adds: ‘I mean God – as long as she’s happy.’
Recovery: Freedom From Our Addictions (£20, Bluebird) is published 21 September
I COULDN’T CONSIDER THE IDEA OF BEING A WOMAN BEFORE AND NOW I CAN