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Ricki Lake Opens Up About Accepting Her Hair Loss After Keeping It a Secret for Years (Exclusive)
For years, Ricki Lake linked with a technology of followers on her eponymous daytime speak present largely partially as a result of she remained genuine, not solely together with her viewers but additionally with herself. So, think about how she felt for many years hiding her hair loss secret. Two years since opening up concerning the ordeal, Lake tells ET she’s by no means been extra content material or completely happy in her life.
Lake, who celebrates turning 54 on Wednesday, opened as much as ET’s Nichelle Turner about accepting her hair loss and the journey she navigated to achieve that time. The actress and TV host penned an emotional social media submit on New Year’s Day 2020 and revealed she had been suffering from hair loss for the higher a part of three a long time. She added that not even her therapists knew the reality.
“It was something I hid for a long, long time,” she tells ET. “And it ate at me. It really, really bothered me, because I really pride myself on being super authentic. What you see is what you get. And I think that’s what makes it so easy for me to be a talk show host. I’m not pretending to be anything but myself. I’ve gone through a lot.”
Like dropping her late husband, the jewellery designer Christian Evans. She was married to him from 2012 to 2015. He tragically died by suicide in 2017.
“I mean, losing my partner, my husband Christian, now five and a half years ago. I mean, that was the darkest time for me,” she mentioned. “And I acquired a lot energy from sharing my journey and my story from individuals who had gone by way of it. So it isn’t a acutely aware factor. I’ve to be precisely who I’m. I’ve gotten by way of it. I’ve actually come a good distance from the place I’ve been.
“And honestly, I’ve never been more content or happy in my life,” she continued. “I think losing Christian to bipolar and suicide and going through that loss, like the way he loved me and losing him, I now love myself the way he loved me. It’s like I’ve come to this place of self-acceptance and self-love through that relationship and losing him.”
She provides that dropping her hair and the bodily transformation was one thing she actually needed to internalize.
“Like, coming out and telling my secret and laying it all out there and accepting myself, you know, bald, if I’m going to have to have a shaved head and rock that for the rest of my life,” she mentioned. “It was coming to this place of, ‘I’m okay.’ And that has brought me to where I am, where I think I valued myself in a way I hadn’t before.”
Just final month, Lake, who married lawyer Ross Burningham earlier this 12 months, shared stunning and dramatic transformation photos amid her battle with hair loss. The side-by-side pictures present her shaved head subsequent to a full, healthy-looking salt-and-pepper coif. The buzzed head photograph is from December 2019, whereas the follow-up shot was taken in January 2021.
“And I don’t have the thickest hair on the block or anything, but my hair is healthy,” Lake tells ET. “I don’t stress about it. I don’t really think about it anymore. And it’s something that consumed me so much. Every time I looked in the mirror when I was going through this, and wearing the extensions, and, ‘Oh, could they see that they were fake?’ And it would pull, it would hurt, and I’d wear a hat. I mean, just, it was my inner battle and I know it seems superficial to people.”
Lake beforehand shared that quite a lot of elements led to the hair loss, however it first started when she starred in Hairspray.
“Ever since I played Tracy Turnblad in the original Hairspray back in 1988 and they triple-processed and teased my then healthy virgin hair every two weeks during filming, my hair was never the same. (Yes, that was all my own hair in the film.),” she defined in her New Year’s Day 2020 post. “From Hairspray to Hairless. In my case, I believe my hair loss was due to many factors, yo-yo dieting, hormonal birth control, radical weight fluctuations over the years, my pregnancies, genetics, stress, and hair dyes and extensions. Working as talent on various shows and movies, whether [Dancing With the Stars] or my talk show, also took its toll on my fine hair.”
Looking ahead, Lake beams on the thought of internet hosting her personal podcast, Raised by Ricki, with The Ellen DeGeneres Show alum Kalen Allen. In the podcast, Lake will reexamine her present that ran for 11 superb seasons. It undoubtedly etched its title in popular culture lore, what with pioneering the DNA check outcomes segments on her present earlier than Maury Povich popularized it on his, and having a few of daytime TV’s most memorable friends, together with the wig snatcher.
Lake was solely 24 when she was handed the mic, and by no means in one million years did she suppose it’d blow up the best way it did.
“No, I didn’t think it was going to be this big huge hit. I never have anticipated any of my success, nor have I calculated the next move,” she mentioned. “Hairspray came along. Okay, I can be Tracy Turnblad. They handed me a talk show. I loved talk shows back then. I was Oprah, Phil Donahue, Sally Jessy. I was an avid watcher. So I was like, ‘Okay, I’ll just channel Oprah.’ But I think as I stepped into the role… I’m curious about people. I love gossip, I love relationships. I love what makes people tick. And so it was that natural curiosity and being a good listener, being candid with my own triumphs and issues and really just being groomed. I don’t know, being brought up through the stages and just getting really comfortable in that role. I’m most comfortable being myself much more so than being an actress.”
Lake will even have particular friends and in addition open up about her life on the podcast. Rosie O’Donnell was her first visitor when the podcast kicked off final week. Andy Cohen, a buddy for practically 30 years, joins episode 2 when it streams Thursday.
But her dream visitor? Oprah Winfrey.
“I mean, why not?” she quipped. “I think we’re going to ask. Kalen has big pipe dreams. I’m like, ‘She’s never going to do our podcast.’ But never say never. Never say never.”
New episodes of Raised by Ricki stream weekly on Lemonada Media or anyplace you may get your podcasts.
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