Page 8 - Katherine Ryan press pack 2015-20

“I talk about my daughter on stage, but that’s becoming more and more fictional,”
she explains. “I love Kevin Hart, but he was talking about his daughter getting her
first period [in his last special] and I was distracted. I was like, did that really
happen? Did she sign off on that?” Besides, she knows that in due course Violet
might not want to be as closely linked with her as she is now. “I’m a very
embarrassing figure. Right now she thinks I’m cool but any minute, she’s going to be
disgusted by every word that comes out of my mouth, everything I do on telly,
everything,” she says. “I want her to have the option to not be too humiliated by my
work, even though it pays for her entire life.”

Meanwhile, there is a chance Ryan may move home – and that wouldn’t be the only
change in her life right now. While filming the upcoming series of Who Do You Think
You Are? back in Canada (“I was just like, please do not let my ancestors have
slaughtered the indigenous population, please!”), she ran into her high school
sweetheart, Bobby, whom she hadn’t seen in 20 years. “I genuinely have always loved
him, always,” she says. “I don’t know if that’s the nostalgia of your first love and
being 16, but he walked in and I was like, wow. Then I just slept with him for an
anecdote. I thought, he’ll go back to his friends and tell them and have a laugh, I’ll
tell my friends, they’ll have a laugh, but no, I just really liked him.” She pauses,
before adding a pained “Uh oh!”

Bobby’s still in Canada so they’re taking things slowly. However, Ryan feels
conflicted about the whole thing given her current projects. “It’s annoying because I
have the special coming out where I’m going, right I’m not going to have a boyfriend
again until I’m in my 60s. I also don’t want to abandon people. I’ve spent all this time
talking to women who feel there is this culture that’s like, ‘She has all these cats and
she says she doesn’t want a boyfriend but she’s lying, she’s incomplete.’ I hate that,
because I felt very happy and very complete.”

In any case, she isn’t about to start extolling the virtues of being coupled up. “Men
are like dolphins – best enjoyed on holiday,” she quips in Glitter Room, and she’s still
keeping Bobby “under review” she says. “I’m like, whatever happens, I don’t want to
be in love, I don’t want to be in a relationship and I don’t want to get married.” Then
she bursts out laughing and flashes a sardonic smile.

 Katherine Ryan: Glitter Room is available on Netflix.