{"id":379163,"date":"2026-04-14T15:29:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T15:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/379163\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T15:29:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T15:29:07","slug":"ruby-wax-absolutely-famous-review-a-candid-return-to-her-most-revealing-celebrity-interviews-comedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/379163\/","title":{"rendered":"Ruby Wax: Absolutely Famous review \u2013 a candid return to her most revealing celebrity interviews | Comedy"},"content":{"rendered":"

What are these shows, in which veteran entertainers regale us with clips from their glorious careers, if not attempts to grasp one more round of applause \u2013 without having to generate any new material? The virtue of Ruby Wax\u2019s contribution to the genre is that she\u2019s disarmingly upfront about this. In a show about fame-hunger and the experience of celebrity, it feels very on point. Co-hosted with her longtime TV producer, Clive Tulloh, Absolutely Famous finds Wax talking us through clips from her BBC show When Ruby Wax Met<\/a> \u2026<\/a>, on which she interviewed the 90s\u2019 and early 00s\u2019 most controversial individuals: OJ Simpson, Imelda Marcos and a certain New York businessman whose notoriety was at that stage (oh, innocent times!) still in its infancy.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no point pretending we experience the shock of the new: Wax has already reflected on these interview experiences in a retrospective for the BBC<\/a>. There\u2019s no denying either that the footage, plus Wax\u2019s insights, make for a very entertaining evening. Here she is talking (and acting out) sexual positions with Pamela Anderson, and here she is being read the rulebook by a steely Madonna. Marvel as Simpson mimes stabbing Wax with a knife, and peek through your fingers at her encounters with Donald Trump and Bill Cosby \u2013 whose loathing for their assertive female interviewer seethes across the screen.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere haven\u2019t been interviews before or since that were so revealing,\u201d Tulloh opines at the start. That may be a stretch, but he and Wax are persuasive that the circumstances for When Ruby Wax Met \u2026 may never be repeated. Skilled at ingratiating herself, Wax was allotted half an hour with Marcos, and got four days. She interviewed Simpson for 17 hours non-stop. You don\u2019t get access like that nowadays; nor do BBC expense budgets. And Wax\u2019s combination of humour and charm, psychological perspicacity and chutzpah, remains a rarity. A second-act Q&A adds more detail, more clips and more celeb gossip from Wax\u2019s life as a Girl on Top<\/a> \u2013 which, like the show as a whole, is non-revelatory but always engaging.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What are these shows, in which veteran entertainers regale us with clips from their glorious careers, if not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379164,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-379163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}