Em Rusciano talks about the moment she ‘snapped’ at a truck driver

Five simple words from a stranger sent Em Rusciano over the edge shortly after she’d quit her radio show, the popular entertainer revealed.

Em Rusciano has opened up about the moment she realised she needed to seek professional help after quitting her high profile radio gig amid a cloud of controversy last year.

Rusciano walked away from the 2Day FM breakfast show she co-hosted alongside Ed Kavalee and Grant Denyer in September.

Her announcement came just a few months after a bombshell interview on Wil Anderson’s Wilosophy podcast in which she admitted she was “not a team player”, wasn’t suited to breakfast radio and was “probably hurtling towards some sort of implosion in the next six months”.

And it turns out she wasn’t wrong.

Rusciano, who was pregnant when she left the radio show, spoke to Anderson again on the latest episode of Wilosophy and revealed she was in a bad headspace after quitting her job.

“I was crossing the road six months pregnant last year and I’d just kind of left the radio,” she told the comedian.

“A truck driver yelled out the window to me, ‘Why don’t you smile love?’ And I snapped. I turned around and said, ‘Why don’t you break your own arm off and fist yourself up the a**e you f***ing mongrel!’

“I realised in that moment I had a bit of s**t to work on,” Rusciano said.

“I was with my 17-year-old daughter and she said to me … ‘Are you OK?’ I looked at her and said, ‘I’m fine!’ But I wasn’t fine and I’d been saying I was fine for so long.”

Rusciano told Anderson that she sought professional help and realised what was truly important in life when she gave birth to a baby boy, Elio, in January this year.

She also said the negative time resulted in her “doing a deep dive on female rage” which formed the basis of her new stage show, The Rage and Rainbows Tour, which she is performing around the country through July and August.

Earlier this month Rusciano commented on her controversial 2018 Wilosophy appearance during a question-and-answer session on Instagram, saying her words were clearly an act of “self sabotage”.

One of Rusciano’s followers asked if she “ever regretted doing something that changed your career dramatically”.

“No,” Rusciano replied. “I think you’re referring to the Wilosophy podcast and you know I did listen back to that and I realised I was trying to self-sabotage.

“I was obviously trying to blow my life up because I was not very happy. So in hindsight, that was a good thing.”

Ed Kavalee, Em Rusciano and Grant Denyer hosted the 2Day FM breakfast show. After Rusciano quit, Ash London replaced her.