Ruby Rose speaks to Pedestrian about bad first dates, celebrity crushes and how not to deflect straight guys.
Hey Ruby where are you and what have you been up to? Well I was in Sydney for breakfast but I’m back in Melbourne now and I’ll be in Brisbane tomorrow and then L.A. the next day. And I’ve just been preparing to go to L.A. for a few weeks before I come back to do a film. It’s been a bit mental.
So what are you doing in L.A.? I’m just going into a studio with a few producers and my friend Tydi. Just trying to get together a few songs for an album. I’ve done five songs so far and directionally the music is changing and evolving into its own little sound so by the end of this trip we hope to have three songs nailed.
And the film? Yeah, I come back in June. I’m going to Bali for a songwriting camp and then I shoot a film with Christina Ricci. I mean my role is small but it’s going to be an amazing film and I’m really looking forward to doing it.
Can you give us the two sentence synopsis? Well, it wasn’t even meant to be publicly announced yet, it was sort of leaked out so I probably shouldn’t say too much. But I can say that it’s an Australian writer named Sarah who wrote the screenplay and it was originally going to be an Australian production with an all Australian cast but they took it overseas and the response was such that it’s now gone international and has a huge name like Christina Ricci attached to it.
Wow, that’s a great place to make your film debut. So how do you split up your time between all the traveling and different passions that you have? You mustn’t get a lot of sleep. I actually have pretty bad insomnia. I get between four and five hours of sleep a night. I can even go on two hours a day and then every month I’ll end up sleeping for twenty five hours on a weekend. Originally because I’m a Pisces and I’m creative I just wanted to do everything all the time. So every opportunity that came up I dived into. Now, a little bit further on, even just this year, I’ve decided that I need to hone in on what I love the most and concentrate on that because otherwise you just become jack of all trades master of none and you end up exhausted. Plus you get what I still get which is people saying “what do you even do anyway?”. And it’s just like ‘stuff you’ I work 33 days in a row, I’m always on a plane, I’m constantly working. But when you don’t have a proper job title I can understand why people would question what you do because you can’t be like ‘I’m this slash this slash this slash this’ because people don’t really recognise that as a job.
So finding out what you love most or what are you best at. Is that what the process is about? Yeah, totally. And I guess just becoming an adult. I’m 26 now and I started at MTV when I was 20. I used to drink a lot and go out a lot and that was the lifestyle associated with that gig, I wouldn’t change it for the world. But everything we did, and was it me and Darren McMullen back then who now hosts The Voice, but back then you just fell into things and you’d be hungover and you’d have a laugh but you never really planned your future. You never really planned what you were doing next year it was more like tell me what we’re doing this week and we’ll do it. So now that I’m a bit older and I don’t drink anymore either it’s all about getting fit and looking after yourself and wanting to set yourself up for the future and being a good role model and aligning yourselves with charities which give back to the community. It’s just a lot more rewarding now. So the process is really about deciding what and where my passions are.
So a long term relationship obviously factors into that ideal of adulthood. Yeah. I’ve always been a long term relationship kind of person. I’m a bit of a hopeless romantic. But the problem with me is it that it kind of has to be long distance too. So say my partner was living in Melbourne, I would never see them because I’m never in Melbourne even though that’s where I live. So apart from a few that have been shorter stints the relationships that I’ve had have always been measured in years. I’m more of a one person kind of gal. Like I live in a bachelor pad, it’s ridiculous, there’s no other way to describe it, but that’s only until I find someone that I want to settle down with. I want to have kids and share that with one person.
I want you to act as a cultural anthropologist almost to the world of lesbian dating. What do you see as the main differences between dating in the straight world and dating in the gay and lesbian world. Oh, that’s a tough question.
Like what are the by products of a smaller pool of potential suitors for example? OK so here’s the thing. Obviously there’s a lot more choice and a lot more potential out there if you’re a straight woman. You can safely assume that if you’re in a club that isn’t a gay club 90% of the guys there are going to be straight. Maybe half of them are single and 10% of them are then ‘good’ from what I can tell from my straight friends who are constantly complaining about men. But when it comes to being a gay woman you go out and there’s maybe a tenth of that pool and half of them are taken and half of the ones who are single are completely bat shit crazy because they’re women and they’re lesbians and as much as I am one we’re all nightmares. And then you hone in on what you’re actually attracted to, speaking very broadly you’re either into butch women or lipstick lesbians. So by the time you’re in a club of 1000 lesbians you’ve got the option of maybe three people (laughs). So you if you see someone that you click with and are attracted to you have to make your move quickly before they’re taken. And the other problem with the small pool is that when you do find someone who you think is amazing you go on Facebook and you have 70 friends in common and there’s just a world of baggage that can potentially flare up with that.
Awkward. So does celebrity entice of intimidate women? Initially I think it made people more comfortable because they knew who I was, they knew that I was a lesbian and they felt that they already knew me. But I’ve worked this out after six years – the ones who are the heat seeking missiles are the crazies and the ones who are intimidated by me and who would be reluctant to approach a celebrity or whatever are usually the ones that I should be talking to. The ones who come up right into my face and are like “Oh my god it’s Ruby Rose, let’s hang out, here’s my number,” are usually really really crazy, scary people. And I’m not saying that about everyone who approaches me but after six years of independent research that’s what the data tells me. That’s the trend. And I’ve got to be careful too because I always want to make sure that the people I’m with, friendship wise or relationship wise, I’ve got to make sure that they are interested in me for the right reasons. And everyone has that problem. It’s not something that’s exclusive to celebrities but it’s something that’s more pronounced I think for certain people. People have ulterior motives and over time you learn how to detect that a little better and weed them out.
So what’s the worst date you have ever been on? All of my dates have gone quite well. Without trying to enforce gender roles I do assume the more ‘male’ role on dates. Like for Valentine’s Day I took my girlfriend out to dinner in L.A. in a limousine and all the cheesy stuff that a boyfriend would usually do. And that probably has more to do with me being a control freak than anything. But yeah, I have been on a few bad dates. When I was 18 I went on a date with this girl at her house and she cooked me dinner which was absolutely disgusting. Literally the worst meal I’ve ever had in my life and she then proceeded to spill this bottle of red wine all over me. And I guess if the date had been going well that sort of thing doesn’t matter, it could be quite cute and endearing and break the ice a little but it was just awkward. Even more awkward – she was playing Missy Higgins in the background. And I love Missy Higgins, she’s now a dear friend of mine, but talk about cliché. You’ve only just met a girl and you’re cooking dinner for her while “The Special Two” is playing? C’mon! And at that time Missy Higgins was such an icon for gay people and for lesbians that the odds were, and I know I did personally, but every one of those songs had a person that it reminded you of. So she’s playing this album and it just reminded me of ex-girlfriends or people that I used to love or still did.
An excellent frame of mind for a first date. Exactly. So it just went terribly and she wouldn’t drive me home because she had been drinking so I went downstairs and I thought it was my worst date but it’s probably hers because I went downstairs and her housemate got home and she was cute and I ended up shagging her housemate. Like a lot of bad dates this one ended with me leaving and pretending like nothing had happened.
So total dream time right now, who would you most like to go on a date with? It’s funny because anytime I’ve had a girlfriend discuss the notion of a celebrity crush or a hall pass or whatever they’re allowed to have one but I’m not because the odds are I might actually meet that person. Whereas if two girls are hypothetically saying I would want to sleep with Katy Perry or Pink or whoever chances are they will never come into contact with them but with me it’s kind of in the job description. Every time I’ve had a hall pass the universe invariably throws them into my orbit. Like it used to be Katy Perry and then I became friends with her. Then it was Jessie J, then it was really Jessie J. I met Jessie J and I tried to take her home with me. I flirted and flirted. I basically begged her. I was one step short of saying I will literally do anything just take me home with you. And she was delightful and very funny about the whole situation then asked me to come on tour with her so it wasn’t too bad. Now my hall pass is Mila Kunis so now just I’m waiting.
You mentioned Jessie J, is your gaydar ever horribly wrong? I’m one of those people who are inclined to believe that everyone’s gay. Just a little bit. Get me in the right mood and maybe more so when I used to drink but I’d see a beautiful girl and be like ‘Yeah, she’s totally gay”. And people would be like “No Ruby, she’s not gay. She’s married and she has a kid” and I’d be like “nah she’s totally gay”. I used to have that tongue in cheek attitude where everyone’s gay, not gay, but everyone had degrees of bisexuality in them. But I’m usually spot on. More with women. Sometime I’ll find out that a guy is gay and it’ll be completely shocking. Or worse, when I think that a guy’s gay and they’re not. So the gaydar is a little skewed in that respect.
Has the opposite happened to you overseas where people might not know who you are and they assume you’re heterosexual? Yeah (laughs). I mean, the short hair and the tattoos – if you’re going by stereotype – I tick a lot of those boxes. But I guess the way that I look, unlike in high school when I had short hair and used to dress a certain way and was kind of a tomboy, and not because of my sexuality, I was just a tomboy, and people say that you do that at a young age as a deflection of sexuality, you’re not trying to attract the boys, but now androgyny is so accepted among both sexes that I’ll be in L.A. and constantly hit on my straight men. And the funny thing is that I just don’t know how to deal with it. My friends always laugh because you’d think I would know. I’ve been out since I was 12 and so one way or another with Melbourne being so small even before I was famous people just found out early. So by the time I was going out guys would come up to me and before they could even finish their sentence my friends would be like “Gay! She’s gay. See you later.” Before he could even say “I just want to buy you a drink” they’d just shut them down because it was so exciting for them. When I’m overseas and a guy hits on me, especially if I’m by myself, I get so awkward. It’s embarrassing. I’ll spend an entire conversation just nodding and looking at the ground. Then they’ll ask for my number and I have no idea what to do. So half of the time I just give them my actual number because I don’t know how to say ‘no’ and then I just don’t answer my phone ever.
Surely you can deny guys in a way which doesn’t involve screening 50 random numbers a day. The things is I wouldn’t have a problem with turning around and telling someone that I’m a lesbian but if they haven’t actually alluded to their interest beyond a friendship and I say that then they turn around and say “I don’t care that you’re a lesbian I just want to have coffee” it’s even more awkward.
Ah I see. So the act of denying someone because they presume you’re straight is itself presumptuous. Yeah exactly. You can’t really say anything until you know for sure. You just hope they drop a “Have you got a boyfriend?”. But they never do.
On that note Ruby, thank you so much for you time. Thanks.
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