‘I’m at the start of the rest of my life. Is that a f*****g weird thing to say?’
Rylan is in his favourite era yet, he says. Loved up, healing from the past, and not holding anything back.
The presenter spoke to Metro on a rainy Monday morning, where he spilled all on narrowly missing out on a Strictly Come Dancing presenting role, his blossoming romance with Kennedy Bates, and how fickle fame can really be.
Rylan, 37, is fresh from his latest TV appearance; an emotional episode of ITV’s The Assembly.
On the show, a groundbreaking interview series where well-known personalities are questioned by a panel of autistic and neurodivergent journalists, he candidly opened up about suffering a mental health episode as well as his ‘paralysing’ split from husband Dan Neal in 2021.
‘I tried my hardest to sort of switch off and not listen to any noise after the episode,’ he explained.
‘You aren’t prepared; they don’t tell you what questions they’re going to ask. You’ve just got to be open and honest because no one’s there to judge. And that’s why it feels so safe.
‘We’ve got so much to learn from a group of people that just asks the questions, instead of just believing what you hear. People always hear stuff about me that’s not true.’
Just days before our interview, Rylan confirmed that he was in the running to present the new series of Strictly Come Dancing, but missed out after his close friend Emma Willis was announced alongside Johannes Radebe and Josh Widdicombe.
‘I’m so over the moon for Em,’ he beams. ‘She’s perfect for that job. And JoJo, who I absolutely adore. I think he’s just going to be amazing and I hope we still get to see him dance as well because his talent is just ridiculous. And Josh, I’ve always got on with really well.
‘I’m so excited to see how that’s going to look. I think we were all like, “this is a bit random”, but I’ve got no doubt that it’s going to be absolutely amazing. It’s a new era for Strictly. And anyone that’s following Tess and Claud, you’ve got to have some big balls to do it. But I think with the power of three, they’ll have a lovely time.’
After 15 years in the spotlight, Rylan is surprisingly honest when it comes to any criticism he’s encountered along the way. Last year he issued a statement after facing backlash for saying something ‘major’ needs to be done about immigration in the UK while hosting This Morning.
He later opened up about seeing some of his friends get ‘cancelled’ as he warned people: ‘Don’t believe everything you read’.
‘I’ll be honest with you, I don’t f*****g care about all of that. I don’t care if someone wants to cancel me, they’re going to cancel me,’ he tells us.
‘We all know what goes on in this world. We can just say one thing and people can just run with it. It’s got nothing to do with fame or a fear of people talking. It’s just about being decent and there’s not a lot of f*****g decent people about.’
The This Morning star is frank when he tells us about his mental health breakdown, admitting: ‘I hate the term rock bottom, but that’s the only way to describe it.’
‘When you get that low, you learn the signs. It’s one of the biggest blessings that I learned during that time of my life. I’m never going to let myself go there again,’ he says.
‘And whatever’s thrown at me, I know the process of how to deal now. I’m grateful I went through that to be able to sit here and say I’m strong enough to get out of it.’
He leaned heavily on his celebrity friends during that time, telling us he credits presenter Ruth Langsford and Steps star Claire Richards for their loyalty after he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital.
‘After all of that, you realise all you need is people that you can really trust. You could’ve killed someone and they go “where should we hide the body?” Claire and Ruth have always been family.’
He’s now in a much happier place, he says. His faces visibly lights up when I ask about fairground director Kennedy, who he started dating last year.
When asked if he would ever tie the knot again, Rylan explains: ‘Just because it doesn’t work out once, doesn’t mean you can’t try again.
‘All I care about is that I’m in a relationship that I want to be in, I’m treating them right, they’re treating me right and whatever happens going forward will be the right thing for us.
‘This is going to sound really weird, but my happy place is getting in the car, going to Leicester, seeing my fella, maybe just being at the fair.
‘It does feel like a little escape, like my own little world where I’m not Rylan, I’m just Ross.’
Rylan delivers some of Amazon’s first Prime Day orders, with hundreds of thousands of deals available for Prime members this week.