English actor-comedian Russell Brand has reiterated his need for God in his life, insisting without Him he “cannot cope in this world.”
“I need spirituality,” Brand told Fox News host Tucker Carlson last week. “I need God, or I cannot cope in this world.”
“As much as I might enjoy the feeling of privilege and luxury,” the Forgetting Sarah Marshall star told Carlson on Tucker Carlson Today, “I remember what reality is.”
“I remember that my wellness is contingent upon spiritual connection, upon certain values and principles,” he continued, “and they, I’m sorry to admit, involve sacrifice and self-scrutiny about my own conduct and behavior, which often falls short, and I’m working on improving myself.”
“Like many desperate people, I need spirituality,” Brand said. “I need God, or I cannot cope in this world. I need to believe in the best in people.”
In his introduction to the segment, Carlson noted Russell Brand has been an actor, comedian, and podcast host for decades, but “all of a sudden, he’s one of the most forceful voices for the truth in the English-speaking world. He’s also a deeply interesting person with a lot of insights about God. Amazing, Russell Brand.”
“I think it’s increasingly necessary that we find new ways of framing the conversation and looking into our hearts when we’re speaking,” Brand said during the interview. “Are we being kind? Are we being loving? Are we being the best that we can be? On whose behalf are we speaking? And what is my intention, moment to moment? Am I doing this for self-glorification?”
Brand said there are reasons for optimism, but optimism is contingent upon reason.
“I’m optimistic about your country, and I’m optimistic about mine, and I’m optimistic about the world,” he said. “But I think the price of that optimism is a certain degree of reason and an acceptance that many people see the world very, very, differently.”
Brand has credited his spirituality with helping him overcome addiction to heroin and alcohol, and believes that other people can change their ways as he did.
“I never felt like I’m in alignment with my beliefs and principles in the way that I do right now,” he said. “I believe in truth and freedom and the ability to express yourself.”
Last December, Brand celebrated 20 years of sobriety and freedom from addiction.
“Because what I have been taught and shown is that it is impossible for a person like me to not drink and use drugs unless I have sufficient ongoing support from people that understand what it’s like to feel that drugs or alcohol, or, you know, certain behaviors are necessary in order to feel OK,” he said at the time of his anniversary.
Russell Brand attends Friendly House 32nd Annual Awards Luncheon at The Beverly Hilton on November 19, 2022 in Beverly Hills, California. (Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images for Friendly House)
Along with drugs and alcohol, the British actor has also been deeply critical of pornography and the addiction it so often produces.
“Pornography reduces the spectacle of sex to a kind of extracted physical act,” he said in 2015. There’s “a general feeling there in your core if you look at pornography that, ‘This isn’t what’s the best thing for me to do; this isn’t the best use of my time now.’ I don’t put that laptop lid down and think, ‘There, what a productive piece of time spent connecting with the world.’”
“I feel like, if I had total dominion over myself, I would never look at pornography again,” Brand said. “One day at a time, I’ll kick it out of my life.”
“Our attitudes toward sex have become warped and perverted and have deviated from its true function as an expression of love and a means for procreation,” he stated, because “the way we have designed and expressed it has become really, really confused.”