BBC Talk-Show Host Returns Stateside With ‘Ruby’

In front of her omnipresent video camera, she managed to charm a deposed Imelda Marcos into revealing her vast, internationally derided shoe collection. As the tape rolled on other occasions, she jokingly called Roseanne a “big pig” to her face and poked a finger into one of Pamela Anderson Lee’s breast implants--back when they were still in service. At the end of one of her most horrific (and well-publicized) interviews, she was even mock-stabbed with a banana by a giddy O.J. Simpson.

She’s Ruby Wax, the quick-witted, U.S.-born British talk-show phenomenon with boundless courage, and she’s headed for a return engagement on American TV--this time with 10 half-hour shows, produced especially for cable’s Lifetime channel, that will run Saturdays at 10:30 p.m. beginning this week.

“Ruby,” as the new outing is titled, comes after a long and successful track record of series and specials for the BBC, and a compilation show with a not-so-auspicious summer run on the Fox network a couple of years back. For “Ruby,” Wax--who is executive producer of the series with Nancy Geller--is keeping the celebrity interviews that completely comprised her earlier show to a minimum. Instead, she’s relying on her innate curiosity and roving camera to engagingly explore everyday people, curious trends and unusual or provocative events. Sort of like a hip Charles Kuralt with a cutting sense of humor.

While she uses the word “mutation” to describe the 1996 Fox series, which grouped severely pared down segments culled from her BBC celebrity interview show “Ruby Wax Meets . . . ,” she is excited about the content of “Ruby.” “Before, I had no say. Now, I get to do what I do,” Wax said in a phone interview recently. “They didn’t argue with me. I don’t get to do exactly what I’d do in England--like join a female chain gang--but it doesn’t have to be lightness and fluff either.”

She describes the new series as “a journey on which you meet extraordinary people.” Episodes were taped around the U.S. and include the irrepressible Wax joining Army boot camp to ascertain precisely what it takes to make a “man”; a visit backstage with the showgirls at the Tropicana hotel in Las Vegas; an exploration of artificial insemination; and an excursion to this summer’s Woodstock 99 festival.

“I go to Woodstock to see what’s missing that might have been there in the ‘60s. Then I told them to get mad . . . and they did!” she jokes. It is a prime example of her irreverent and politically incorrect take on human behavior, in this case the fires and rioting that came at the end of the recent musical event.

Among the few celebrity-oriented “Ruby” entries are a trip to the Nevada prairie to ensnare a cowboy boyfriend for pal Carrie Fisher, a day in the life of Wax’s longtime friend Rupert Everett and a reunion with Pamela Anderson Lee, wherein Wax goofs as an extra on Anderson’s “VIP” TV series. While Lee has been on the receiving end of some of Wax’s more pointed barbs, the ‘90s sex icon takes it in good stead, Wax maintains. (“Pamela plays ball,” explains the chunky, frequently self-deprecating mother of three. “I’d never do it to be mean.”)

Extemporaneously funny, disarmingly perceptive and oh so assertive, Evanston, Ill.-born Wax--a onetime waitress at a Holiday Inn coffee shop--moved to England to study acting and performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company before becoming a TV writer for Britain’s sketch-parody series “Not the Nine O’Clock News” and “For Four Tonight” and later a story editor for the hit BBC comedy series “Absolutely Fabulous.” Then it was on to her own series.

But success didn’t come as readily here. Part of the reason the Fox compilation series failed to create much of a stir, she says, was that each interview, originally presented in a 40-minute format on the BBC, was edited down to around 10 minutes, favoring the funnier moments.

“Each show was [originally] a roller-coaster ride. There was a buildup where you saw each relationship develop,” Wax says, unlike the pared-down Fox version, in which “there was no leading up to anything, no foreplay.”

“I looked insane,” she says now. “It would never work, even in Czechoslovakia. It started out as a special, then 300 people were fired [at the network] and it became six half-hours overnight. It was TV suicide.”

As an example of the intricacies of forging a bond with her guests, she cited the award-winning Imelda Marcos program, in which violent images of Marcos-regime Philippine political unrest were intercut with shots of the former first lady unselfconsciously warbling “Feelings” in her high-toned Manila living room especially for Wax.

“But it took three days to convince Imelda to show me the shoes. The relationship had to be built over time.” And, as she noted on that program, Wax’s appearance that particular week on the cover of the trendy and popular British magazine Hello! did not hurt her standing with Mrs. Marcos.

But is there a difference between American and British TV audiences? “I think [the show’s appeal] has to do with intelligence,” Wax says. “The same type of people embraced ‘Absolutely Fabulous’ here [in the U.S.] that embraced it there [in Britain]. American TV underestimates its audience, until you get something like Garry Shandling and HBO.

“Edge is the word I’m looking for,” she says, blaming her rare loss of words on the separation from her source of stimulation--and edginess. “I’ve been outside England for three months. I need to get back.”

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* “Ruby” premieres at 10:30 p.m. Saturday on Lifetime.