What does Ruby Rose do?
Despite having worked the past forty days straight, this is a regular question posed to the Australian celebrity. Rose refers to herself as a ‘slashie’, I sat down for breakfast with the multifaceted star to hear about everything she’s been up to, and how she deals with negative misconceptions.
The long list of roles starts off with MTV, although no longer an active position for Rose, working as an MTV presenter for five years served as a launching pad for the mass work opportunities that have rapidly turned Ruby Rose into a household name.
‘I was already working out I wanted to do some acting, then I had a clothing range, then I got a radio show, it kind of just happened that way. I made the doors open; if I was at a photo shoot I made sure I knew everyone’s names and where I was and who the photographer was. I sent thank you letters to everyone that hired me that year’.
Other positions snapped up by the ambitious 26 year old include model (she’s the face of Maybelline), spokesperson for Headspace (that’s the youth mental health organisation), boxer (she goes by ‘The Thorn’) and just recently, a music artist.
Releasing her first single occurred ‘illegally fast’ according to the star, but organically,
‘Usually with music you write a song, you record it, then you’ve got to get everyone to work out when you’re going to release it, promo, press kits… I was just like “let’s release it!”, and they’re like “no no there’s a formulation, we have to let people know you have a song, we have to let radio know”, and I’m like “just put it out there! It is coming out this year and that’s the end of the story”
‘So we shot the film clip in London and packaged it up and went there it is and put it out there and that’s how it came about. With that recording we didn’t even do it in a fancy studio we just wanted to keep it natural and as raw as possible.’
The drive to succeed seems to stem from a tough upbringing for Rose, the fight for success and independence have had their ups and downs, ‘I’m very down to earth and I literally grew up with nothing, we used to eat canned baked beans and canned spaghetti every day for like a year, I grew up in a caravan in someone’s back yard, we never had a car.’
The battle to be independent had its complexes, Rose spoke of times that issues appeared in relationships. ‘That’s the story of my ex girlfriends, I would never let them pay for anything, but then when we break up I’m like “you never even bought me dinner!” and they’re like “you are a control freak, who never let me buy dinner!”’
The good definitely outweighs the bad, despite online trolls consistently asking her ‘what do you do?’ Rose recently sat with Julia Gillard as an ambassador for Headspace,
‘To think I went from being bullied at school, to struggling to see a light at the end of the tunnel and being suicidal, and turning to drugs and
alcohol, to then be sitting with Julia Gillard and stealing her cookies when she wasn’t looking’, she said.
‘It’s like yeah while you’re trolling on the internet I’m having lunch with the leader of this country! Okay?’
Having worked as a DJ on-and-off for a number of years, the songstress explained that her recent gig supporting Nicki Minaj was both challenging and nerve wracking:
‘I was really nervous about that gig before I did it just because I would be playing hip hop and r&b and I usually play 128bpms, always house music. Trying to find a song that doesn’t have Tyga or Nicki Minaj in it is really hard! They all feature on each other’s songs! I looked at all the top 50 urban r&b hip hop songs and everything either had Nicki or Tyga on it.’
So what’s next for the woman that apparently doesn’t do much of anything?
‘The film I did will come out… there will be another single!’, announces Rose, ‘Aside from that it’s just me working on new music.’
Ruby Rose’s debut single Guilty Pleasure with Gary Go is available now in iTunes.
Nadine Walker
