how life in the Pussycat Dolls almost broke me

The Dolls danced and writhed on stage as if they’d never left it, Roberts in leather hotpants with a bare bottom. “We wanted to come back with a bang,” she says. “We knew we represented being sassy and being ‘out there’ but, I mean, my little butt cheeks… Oh my gosh.” She was 37 by then, but she danced as if she were still the 19-year-old who had left Phoenix, Arizona, for Los Angeles. She had begun dancing at three, singing at eight. Her father, Pat Roberts, was in the world of rock’n’roll as a percussionist in the Mamas & the Papas. She had seen Janet Jackson on stage with her mother, Peggy Lorraine, and thought, “I want to do that.”

Today Roberts, at 43, looks relaxed, happy and wholesome. She is wearing a cute lilac shorts and crop-top gym set. Her skin is lightly tanned, her hair highlighted. She is now a breakfast presenter on Heart radio, with Amanda Holden and Jamie Theakston, and she has her own Noughties show on Saturdays. We are meeting because Roberts has written a book, Breathwork: Techniques for Better Mental, Emotional and Physical Health, which seems to have taken her by surprise. It is about the power of learning how to breathe properly and how to self-soothe. She’s aware of how woo-woo it sounds, voicing what most of us think: “Who the hell has time to stop and do breathing exercises?” Apparently, 45 per cent of us — and about 67 per cent of men — would prefer to give themselves an electric shock than sit for 15 minutes a day quietly with their own thoughts. “I get it,” she says.

With Ant and Dec on I’m a Celebrity… in 2012

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But there can be no better example than Roberts of a life transformed by its practice. Interwoven with the exercises is the story of what happened to Roberts before, during and after becoming a Pussycat Doll. She has had — until discovering breathwork — an almost lifelong dependence on the benzodiazepine Xanax. It started during high school but even as a small child she self-soothed with NyQuil (like Night Nurse in the UK), before moving on to the antidepressant Lexapro, then finding Xanax.

“I was so young and I didn’t have the knowledge I have now. I think A led to B led to C. Xanax is addictive. For me, for decades I was just leaning on what I could get to help me crash out. My brain just wouldn’t shut off and my anxiety was too intense. It was, ‘I want to sleep; I need to sleep,’ and I was willing to take whatever would help me.”

Cut to life as a global pop star, which began when she joined the Pussycat Dolls in 2003 when she was 22. She was discovered in LA, as a dancer, by the group’s founder, Robin Antin. By 2005, their album PCD was multiplatinum, with global hits such as Don’t Cha and Buttons selling many millions.

‘My body just shut down’

“I remember being on stage in New York with the crowd singing back the lyrics and thinking, ‘Oh, this is really happening.’ It was a fast, extreme rocket ship. There were no discussions around, ‘How is your mental health?’ It was a different era. Now, artists are coming forward to talk about their struggles and concerts are rejigged. I remember once we were in three countries in one day. Eventually, my body just got to the point of shutdown. I was really, really sick.”

Roberts’s account — which, incidentally, she tells apportioning no specific blame to the male-dominated music industry — is nonetheless a revealing insight. You can’t help but be struck by how hard the band worked.

With her partner, George Rollinson, 27. “It was just a bit of fun. But it’s my healthiest relationship ever”

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The breaking point came almost five years after that platinum album. The toll on her body was too much: a reliance on Xanax; years of bad eating; bad sleeping; intense adrenaline with nowhere for it to go after a show; a life on the road with no home comforts as well as managing what is now openly acknowledged to have been the band’s complex dynamic, with Scherzinger, as the main singer, wielding more power than the rest.

Eventually, Roberts was admitted to hospital. The Pussycat Dolls were in London. Even at this point, she remembers worrying only about her place in the band. She initially resisted medical advice to have an emergency MRI — thinking, there’s no time — but it was suspected that she’d had a brain aneurysm. It was, in fact, extreme stress, exhaustion and burnout.

‘There was this feeling that we could be replaced’

“I remember saying [in the hospital], ‘I need to get on a flight to Germany. I’ve got a show to do. You gotta give me something.’ That was the mentality. I was having extreme headaches, being sick. They found viral arthritis in my knee. I couldn’t do anything really. But that was my drive. And then when I finally got out of the Dolls [in 2010], I had eczema all over my legs, shingles across my face and a stomach ulcer. An acupuncturist told me then, ‘If you don’t scream, your body’s gonna scream for you.’ It was a manifestation of ‘go, go, go’ for years or ‘grind, grind, grind’, an accumulation of being on the road at a time when nobody really spoke up about anything. There was also this feeling that we could be replaced in some way. But also there was my own drive, growing up as a dance competitor. So it was a combination of the two.”

On Strictly Come Dancing with Pasha Kovalev, 2018

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In the book Roberts refers to “trauma experiences”. Eight years after the Dolls disbanded, and after she had lost her father, Pat, to suicide following his own lifelong battle with mental illness, she resorted to eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing therapy, a type of psychotherapy used to heal trauma after distressing life events. She was not the only Doll who had therapy. How bad was it? Roberts is diplomatic, saying, “There was just so much going on, so many different levels.” In explosive tweets, one former temporary band member — Kaya Jones — launched an attack on the treatment of the group by music execs and Antin, who refuted the charges.

Roberts’s story echoes the trajectory of other talented young women in the music industry (Amy Winehouse being one) — women who pursue their dreams, who love what they do, but do so at risk to their wellbeing because of the “system”. Britney Spears was an early supporter of the group and look what happened to her during her career. Stars such as Taylor Swift, Dua Lipa and Charli XCX have changed that and not a moment too soon.

‘Practising breathing, I do feel better’

In the book, Roberts is funny and self-deprecating. In person, now the picture of good health, she is similarly low-key and modest. I get the impression she genuinely wants other people to be able to calm themselves down without medication.

“It’s probably a bit of having grown up, but I really feel like practising breathing has allowed me to understand how my body feels around certain people.

“My foundation is stronger. I’m not saying I’m some kind of guru, or that I’ve got a certificate saying I’ve got everything figured out. If anything, it’s the opposite. But I do feel better.”

It got her off Xanax, it changed her relationship with herself — which was always the primary goal — and it changed her relationship with men. Her partners post-the Dolls were “macho” men who made her feel safe on a surface level, but were essentially repeating unhealthy patterns. “For whatever reason,” she writes, “probably something to do with being so lost without my dance and what I went through with losing my dad, I got caught up in a series of relationships that weren’t healthy. The one thread that ran through was that I was finding myself attracted to these ultra-masculine types who would then treat me in an unduly controlling way.

‘There was a sense of constant judgment’

“It was traditional gender roles, a lot of possessiveness, and this very strange contradiction of feeling so safe with these big dudes who had the physical power to protect me, but at the same time not safe at all because of the way they spoke to me and treated me. It was more that I was on edge, constantly feeling guilty and worried I was about to do something wrong. There was a sense of surveillance and constant judgment.”

Two years ago she met her present partner, George Rollinson, an artist and tattooist. He is 27 to her 43. “I was having my hot girl summer. I was 41, I was finally feeling fabulous, the best I’ve felt in my life, comfortable in my body, just being free and enjoying myself. In the beginning, we were just having fun and I was thinking. ‘Well, this is not going to go anywhere because you’re too young.’ But then I thought, ‘You are the most emotionally intelligent, most transparent, most kind guy. I feel like I’m in the healthiest relationship ever. I’ve finally got there, you know?”

Her early blueprint of male behaviour was her beloved father, but she says from an early age her nervous system was affected by his up and down moods. Some days he was a “goofy big child”; at other times she worried about him surviving.

‘I make sure I live life, because of my brother’

Her parents separated when she was 14. At 16, her brother, Jayce, was diagnosed with a severe mental illness after years of misdiagnosis. “We didn’t necessarily think anything of it until he got a bit older and things started to shift a lot.”

Jayce lives in a psychiatric institution in the US. “When I visit my brother, I get a real awakening of the freedom we all have. I’ve sort of dedicated [the rest] of my life to making sure I live it, because my brother doesn’t get to make that choice.”

Pat Roberts died in 2018. “He couldn’t take it any more. He’d had enough. I’d watched him struggle my whole life and it’s something you think you are prepared for, that [suicide] could be a possibility, but you never really prepare yourself.”

“With I’m a Celebrity, I thought, well, I’ll have stories to tell”

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Roberts had ruled out parenthood herself early on, even as a child. “I was very clear that the cycle would end with me,” she says, referring to the Roberts family’s apparent genetic predisposition to mental illness.

And now? “There’s still a huge part of me that doesn’t want to take that risk [of passing on mental illness]. I love travelling and I love furry animals and I’d probably be really happy having five dogs running around and jumping on my face.”

‘I loved working with Ant and Dec’

There is something so joyful and optimistic about Ashley Roberts. Her social media is full of funny little skits. When the Dolls broke up for good she found a life coach, took acting lessons in LA, learnt improv and revisited cities and countries that she had only experienced via hotel rooms. She went to an ashram in California and dedicated a month of her life to doing something new (swimming with sharks, skydiving, riding a motorbike). In 2012 she appeared on I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! without really understanding what it was. “Snakes and rats, that’s not my vibe. But I was like, ‘F*** it, I’ll have stories to tell,’ ” she explains. It turned out to be a great career move.

“It changed the trajectory of my life. I slept the best I’ve ever slept. To this day, I don’t know why.”

“I am not alone in having difficult things to cope with. I just want to share what I’ve learnt”

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The British public loved her and she made it to the final. There were also rumours that Dec, before his marriage to his former manager, was smitten with her. She would go on to have a spell on Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway (2013-6), the duo picking up that Roberts didn’t remotely take herself seriously. “They’re great boys,” she says. “Amazing humans. I loved working with them.”

The world of UK entertainment adopted her and, after a period of living partly in LA and London, she moved here full time. Strictly Come Dancing was mooted in 2017 but was delayed until 2018. Her father had intended to fly over to watch her, but missed seeing her dance.

“I felt like I could honour him,” Roberts says. She danced with her partner, Pasha Kovalev, on Remembrance Sunday weekend, and dedicated the routine to her father. The judges were reduced to tears. Even now, bereaved people come up to her in the street to thank her.

A year after Strictly, while working at Heart, she was also in the West End musical Waitress. So why would she even have contemplated embarking on a 36-date world tour in a band that had destroyed her health?

“I’m a woman now,” she says. “I feel more connected to my body. I was like, ‘I’m gonna enjoy this.’ And I always loved the feeling of being on stage with an audience.”

Despite everything, there are no regrets. “It all had to happen. It was outrageous, brilliant, exhausting, challenging, tough. It was everything.”

The tattoos prove it, from “KA” — kick ass — on a finger to “love and transformation” on her left foot. “Now I’m in a space where I have the tools. I know I am not alone having difficult things to cope with. I just want to share what I’ve learnt. Maybe it will help other people.”

Breathwork: Techniques for Better Mental, Emotional and Physical Health by Ashley Roberts (Leap, £20) is published on July 17. To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk or call 020 3176 2935. Free UK standard P&P on online orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members

Hair: Lewis Pallett at Eighteen Management using Authentic Beauty Concept. Make-up: Lan Nguyen-Grealis at Eighteen Management using Armani Beauty