Depression is no joke. Wayne Brady built his career on making other people laugh, but behind the scenes, the Whose Line Is It Anyway? comedian was waging a very personal battle against depression. He opened up about his "complete breakdown" in a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight's Nischelle Turner, set to air Monday, Nov. 3.
"Folks think, 'Well, Wayne Brady's always happy,'" the Let's Make a Deal host, 42, told Turner of the pain he hid behind his ever-present grin. "No, I'm not always happy. Because I'm human."
Everyone has bad days, of course, but for Brady, those bad days turned into weeks, and then into months and years. "Some days, you don't want to move, you can't move in the darkness," he said of his lowest points. "You're like, 'You know what, I'm just gonna sit right here, and I'm gonna wallow in this. And as much as it hurts, I'm just gonna sit right here, because this is what I deserve. Because I am that horrible of a person.'"
He hit bottom, he says, in June of this year, on his 42nd birthday. "I was there, by myself, in my bedroom, and I had a complete breakdown," he told Turner. "And when I say breakdown, just go ahead and imagine for yourself a brother in his underwear, in his room, crying."
That day marked a turning point for him. "[It] was the beginning of, 'Okay, I gotta make a change,'" he said.
He was further moved to action by the death of fellow comedian Robin Williams, who died of suicide in August. "[Robin] was someone that brought such love and light to a few generations of people…He made everyone feel great," Brady said of the late Mrs. Doubtfire actor. "But…all that love could not stop that man from saying, 'I am in so much pain.'"
The star credits his ex-wife, Mandie Taketa, with helping him to step out of the darkness and onto the road to recovery. "It took me a while to get my stuff together to go, 'You know what? If you're not happy you have to do something about it,'" he told ET. "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.'"
For more from Wayne Brady's interview, tune into Entertainment Tonight on Nov. 3.
