TV presenter Phillip Schofield reflected on how “dark” his life became and how his daughters helped him “take a step back from the edge” as he returns to television.
The 62-year-old former This Morning presenter will be seen on screen in Channel 5’s Phillip Schofield: Cast Away, his first appearance on a TV series since he left ITV in May 2023 after he admitted to an “unwise but not illegal” affair with a younger male colleague.
The three-part series sees him marooned on a tropical island off the coast of Madagascar with a handful of cameras, with the first episode showing his shelter nearly being blown off on the first night, as well him being lost at night and looking for crabs to eat.
Following his arrival at the small island of Nosy Ankarea, he reflects on how the survivalist experience is helping to empty what he calls his “toxicity tanks”.
He says he wants people to “bugger off and let me get on with the quiet life that you’ve all given me”, and then reflects on how “dark” things became.
Schofield, who had presented This Morning alongside Holly Willoughby since 2009 until his exit, appears to hint in the first episode that he considered suicide, as he talks about how when his daughters, Ruby and Molly, were looking after him.
Speaking alone to camera, on the island, he says when he was in the media storm, he “got so, so close, I had everything in place, everything was set up and everything was ready”.
He added: “Molly said, ‘Do you imagine what this would do to us if you actually managed to pull this off? Imagine what would happen. Can you imagine what it would do to me if you did this on my watch’, and that was just enough to take a step back from the edge.
“I could have been hospitalised. I had the option to be hospitalised, but then I thought, that’s going to get out. So I just raced to the family home and shut the gates.”
The TV personality also recounts a visit to his mother, Pat, in hospital, when a fan gave him a hug and told him he supported him.
Getting tearful, he adds: “I never, in my wildest, wildest dreams, thought that I would sit here and and look at this and do this, discover something new every day.
“(It’s) nice to discover new things about yourself, like for you, for you personally. You don’t look online. People tell you what they think you’re like.”
While talking about coming out during an episode of This Morning alongside his former co-presenter Willoughby in 2020, Schofield says the “wheels came off”.
He added: “I know that coming out for so many people is liberating, and it’s freedom on a plate, absolutely be yourself, live your life to the absolute full.
“That’s the saying, just live your best life. But for me, doing it later in life, at the moment it’s just given me more anguish than joy because I’m fully aware of the damage that it leaves. I still have the love of my family, never wavered.”
He also says there has been “such a chunk of my older life that I’ve just been sad, locked myself away, put myself into into my own personal lockdowns over and over and over again”.
“We’re here for such a brief space of time, so tiny,” he adds.
“What’s the point in wasting it? What’s the point in not being happy regardless?”
Before taking the Eurostar to leave the UK so he can fly in secret to get to Africa, Schofield appeared to rule out I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here, and returning to ITV.
He said: “I’m apparently four to one to do the other jungle programme.
“Although my best mates host it, there are some channels you just won’t work for.
“There are just some people you won’t work for.”
The first episode begins with Schofield being asked why he wants to take on the challenge of being stuck on a deserted island alone, having to gather his own food, to which he responds: “I think there’d be an awful lot of people that hope I never come back.”
As clips are shown of his career on children’s TV, in theatre, and on This Morning including with Willoughby, he questions if the “ultimate isolation can finally set me free”, or if he will be “consumed by my inner demons”.
He added that This Morning was a “joy” and a “privilege”, and he understands how he has been “lucky” during his more than four decades of TV career, until it came to an end in 2023.
“When it came to a sudden very abrupt end, you know one minute you’re there and then the next minute you’re gone, you know what it feels like to be cancelled,” he also said.
“It’s like the biggest grenade going off in your life, and you know you let people down, you’ve let yourself down, and it was unwise and (an) unprofessional thing to do, I will be forever sorry, I screwed up, I made a mistake, and I hurt the people around me.”
Schofield also said he has “no right”, to say “poor me”, pointing to his more than four decades of success.
Before a video is shown of his family including wife Stephanie Lowe, and daughters having a BBQ in the garden, he says they “think it’s a great idea, and we’ve talked a lot about it”.
During the episode he also says: “Cancellation is a funny old thing, because, if you’re cancelled, then that’s it. I assume you’re dead. You can’t do anything. everything you do is wrong.”
When asked before travelling how he would feel if he quit Cast Away, he says: “Oh it is inconceivable that I would quit, I don’t quit, I’m fired but I never quit.”
He also said he “never wanted to be famous”, but does not miss learning “a lot about people”, appearing to point to negative aspects of fame.
Phillip Schofield: Cast Away begins airs at 9pm on Monday on Channel 5, and will continue on Tuesday and Wednesday at the same time.
