Just two months after his divorce from Katy Perry was finalized, Russell Brand is still rationalizing the pair’s parting of ways.
Though their whirlwind romance landed them as husband and wife in just over a year’s time, the couple’s 14-month marriage only revealed their true discordance.
“Sometimes it goes well, sometimes it don’t,” Brand candidly explained to Australia’s 60 Minutes. “But if you sort of sense there’s an incompatibility, then in any relationship regardless of the status of the individual, it kind of is best to go separate ways.”
So does the British funnyman believe mates must be akin to each other?
“I don’t know really, because I sort of find so many different people interesting,” Brand reasoned. “I think if you’re someone who’s really into mountain biking, it would be good to go out with someone else who’s into mountain biking, and if you’re really into Eastern mysticism, go out with someone else who into Eastern mysticism.”
Drastic dissimilarities, Brand added, could spell disaster for a couple. “I think if you’re a devoted tennis professional and you get married to a crystal meth addict, you might have trouble,” he said. “I’ve been in a lot of trouble.”
And that includes his past heroin addiction. “It’s a very comforting thing to be able to take drugs, and it’s irrational,” Brand explained. “Most people that are addicted to drugs are doing it for medicinal reasons because they’re all sad inside.” But Brand eventually dug himself out of his drug hell, saying it simply “stopped working. You know…it only works for a little while.”
Though he’s successfully rehabilitated, there’s a lingering “pang,” he admits, “because it was a good friend. You don’t think, ‘That was the thing that destroyed my life and got me into a lot of trouble.’ You sort of just remember that sort of warm, snug glow.”
So what keeps Brand on the straight and narrow? Comedy. “It’s the most important thing to me,” he said. “I think it formed a barrier between me and the unbearable pain of being alive, both watching it and doing it.”
And while sometimes acting pays the bills, is just “a job” to Brand. “I like it, it’s really nice, you get to work with nice people,” he said. “But comedy is what I do.”
