Rylan Clark reflected on friends being 'cancelled' as he appeared on an episode of The Assembly this weekend. The presenter, 37, was the latest celebrity taking to the hot seat on the hit ITV show, which sees famous faces answer unfiltered questions from an audience.
One notable moment saw participant Jacob ask Rylan: 'How do you cope when one of your celebrity friends is cancelled?' Rylan looked visibly shocked by the question as the room gasped, and after gathering himself for a moment, Rylan answered: 'It's really tough... Especially because some of them are not just my work friends – they're genuinely, like, close friends.'
'At the end of the day, if someone's done something wrong, then I understand why they can't carry on doing what they're doing.' While Rylan didn't specifically name who he was talking about, he added: 'But I do feel today that we live in a world where people will wanna go for you and cancel you for the sake of just doing it, because they can.'
He then urged people not to 'always believe what you hear or read' and that you shouldn't be 'frightened to ask why' certain decisions are made. As Jacob walked off, Rylan then joked: 'God, this is like a lucky dip. You just don't know what's coming next, do you?'
While Rylan didn't refer to anyone in particular when he spoke, he has a large group of A-list pals due to his work on This Morning and Radio 2. He continues to have a close friendship with radio star Scott Mills, who was axed by the BBC earlier this year. It was announced on March 30 that Scott, 53, had been sacked after 28 years, allegedly due to claims of a historical relationship. The Mirror linked the decision to fire Mills to a 2016 police investigation into 'serious sexual offences' against a teenage boy between 1997 and 2000. The case was dropped around seven years ago due to a lack of evidence.
Also during the episode of The Assembly, Rylan was questioned over his infidelity that led to him splitting from husband Dan Neal before suffering a mental breakdown. Rylan previously revealed his infidelity which caused the downfall of his six-year marriage back in 2021, with one audience member asking: 'When you told your husband you cheated on him, he divorced you. Is honesty always the best policy?' Stunned, he replied: 'Yeah, I think it is. I'm okay admitting I'm in the wrong, because actually I don't deal well with guilt and I don't deal well with secrets. It made me so ill, like so ill. It sounds a terrible thing to say, but I'm glad it happened.'
Rylan was then asked: 'What do you miss about Dan, if anything?', to which he responded: 'Do you know, I never think about him'. Speaking about his breakdown that followed, he said it truly felt like having the 'rug pulled from under you'. 'That's the only way I can describe it. It's like someone went like that and I fell over, and I couldn't get back up. [It was] like I broke both my arms and legs. I thought I wasn't going to get out of it. I went back to live with my mum because I didn't want to be in my house, because there were too many memories of things in there.'
Taking to X, viewers were full of praise for both the candid nature of the show and Rylan's refreshing honesty, which brought many to tears.
