Annette Sharp: Where to next for TV darling Jessica Marais?
In the wake of Packed to the Rafters star Jessica Marais being rushed to hospital last week, Annette Sharp asks the difficult question: Is a celebrity life a good fit for anyone with mental health issues?
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A co-ordinated medical intervention that saw a distressed Jessica Marais rushed to a Sydney hospital by ambulance last weekend raises an important question: what can be done when repeat rehab fails?
It’s a question that family and friends of TV game show host Andrew O’Keefe will also have been asking in recent months, following O’Keefe’s third stint in rehab in a year.
For Marais — who once opened up to a women’s magazine about being bipolar but has remained resolutely silent on what has been playing havoc with her mental health issues in the years since — there is now a genuine sense of urgency associated with her recovery and health status.
It was an unknown third party who notified authorities of the actor’s distress last Saturday and in doing so triggered the welfare check that discovered the actor in an agitated and distraught state.
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What Marais needed next was to be taken somewhere safe, be assessed by doctors and given a medical review.
Luckily police and ambulance officers were at hand to ensure it happened quickly.
Importantly, she also needed to feel the warm secure embrace of a loving family.
What she likely didn’t need was for an actor from her most celebrated TV years — now more than a dozen years behind her — to drop by and take photos of his “earth angel” looking pretty and happy in a bunch of childish Instagram filters, which he then posted to his 96,000 followers and, by virtue, the world at large. But possibly Hugh Sheridan imagined it could help Marais somehow.
Fandom.
It’s never going to restore a person after a breakdown or a health relapse.
It will be two years next month since Marais checked herself into famed Sydney mental health and drug rehab hospital the Bronte Clinic for treatment.
Just what doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists at the clinic did for her during her month as a facility inpatient may never be known — but we can celebrate the fact that she is still here, two years on, working on her recovery and battling her demons.
Of course Marais’ career has stalled in the intervening years, with the actor pulling out of three different drama projects.
The first was Nine’s drama Bad Mothers, from which she withdrew in September 2018, citing her “health”.
The second was Nine drama Halifax: Retribution, to which she was attached along with her Packed To The Rafters co-star Rebecca Gibney. She withdrew from that in July 2019, citing her “schedule and personal commitments”.
Then this year, in February, Marais pulled the pin on Seven/Amazon’s Rafters’ reboot Back To The Rafters due to “personal reasons”.
While the cast and work friends have rallied around her, clearly convinced work is what the actor needs now, Marais has struggled.
She has previously spoken of battling bipolarism since age 12 and attempting to treat it with cognitive therapy rather than medication.
In 2014 she described her issues as “manageable”.
A celebrity life is an ill fit for one who has mental health issues.
The Chase host Andrew O’Keefe would probably agree, although — as he’s said previously — it’s also incredibly seductive for anyone craving the sweaty thrill of a performance high.
“I got into television because it was the love of creation and performance … you know you’re getting your craft right or wrong when you’re standing in front of an audience and sweating and they’re out there and you can hear them breathing. Now there’s a thrill. Some would call that an addiction,” he said in October.
“I got to a point where I knew it wasn’t sustainable to work, to grieve, to feel pain and not to sleep, so I took myself off to the clinic.”
But after three rehab stints and as many apologetic game show returns, surely O’Keefe — and Marais also — must be weary of the routine and of having to keep getting out of their own way.
Perhaps the time has come for these entertainers to hang up their stars forever in the pursuit of rehabilitation that lasts.
Twitter: @InSharpRelief, email: annette.sharp@news.com.au
Originally published as Annette Sharp: Where to next for TV darling Jessica Marais?