NEED TO KNOW

  • Ricki Lake opens up about losing her home in the L.A. wildfires, moving to N.Y.C. and her involvement with Community Access in an exclusive interview
  • “I choose to find the light in the darkness,” says Lake, who describes her year as “so traumatizing, so harrowing”
  • Lake also discusses the Changing Minds Young Filmmaker Festival, a compilation of 10 short films in which young people tell “stories about their own mental health journeys”

Ricki Lake is doing her best “to find the light.” She wants to help others to do the same.

After losing her Malibu home in the devastating wildfires that tore through Los Angeles County last January, the actress, 57, and her husband Ross Burningham relocated to New York City — even though Burningham, a San Diego native, “had never spent more than a week at a time” there before. “He took a leap of faith,” Lake tells PEOPLE, “and said, ‘Yeah, let’s go.’ ”

“It’s crazy, because what we have been through from the start of the year was so traumatic and we were so at a loss of where we were going to go,” says Lake. “We made this very impulsive decision to move here. And honestly, it’s been the best thing we could have done for both of us.”

The Ricki Lake talk show host is now closer to her N.Y.C.-dwelling sons Milo, 28, and Owen, 24, and while she is “still healing,” she says she’s also been “taking a bite out of this city in a way that I never did when I left 22 years ago after my show ended. It’s wild.”

Part of that experience has been getting more involved with an organization that has long been dear to her heart: Community Access.

Ricki Lake speaking at a Community Access event.

Sean Sime

Explaining her support for the non-profit, which has been around since the ‘70s, Lake tells PEOPLE: “Not only do they provide affordable permanent housing for people suffering with mental health and being homeless, they also have programs that help them get jobs, help them learn to write a resume…it’s incredible.”

And this year, the housing and mental health nonprofit produced a compilation film, Changing Minds Young Filmmaker Festival, made up of winning submissions from its long-running Changing Minds initiative. Released in November, the movie (which features an introduction from John Turturro) includes 10 short films. From depression to bipolar disorder, each film is produced by young people — ages 15 to 25 — and showcases “stories about their own mental health journeys; it’s inspiring, it builds conversation and community,” says Lake.

As someone who entered the film industry at a young age, and who got involved with Community Access to “talk about my experience with loving someone with mental illness” (her second husband, Christian Evans had bipolar disorder and died by suicide in 2017), the competition and the movie mean a lot to Lake. She also hopes it inspires empathy in others.

“All of us, can put ourselves in the shoes of young people struggling to find their way,” she says.

“And in a time when there’s just so much bad news and bad stories of people doing bad things, I want more of this,” she adds. “I want more joy and giving and just people being represented and heard and supported.”

Asked why she wants to highlight mental health in particular, in addition to Evans, Lake also cites “the loss of” beloved director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele. (Reiner’s son Nick, who is facing two counts of first-degree murder in connection with his parents’ deaths, was reportedly being treated for schizophrenia prior to the killings.) “I feel like everyone knows someone [struggling with mental health],” she says. 

“And quite frankly, the world we’re living in now, we all have some sort of mental illness,” Lake continues. “We all suffer, whether it’s from loneliness or dependency on self-medicating.”

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The Hairspray star adds that she is “certainly guilty of that over the last few years, of just doing things that weren’t necessarily kind to my body because of just trying to get through the day, and just numb out a little bit.”

Ricki Lake at a Community Access event.

Sean Sime

Most of 2025 was “so traumatizing, so harrowing… we did not know what we were going to do, and here we are,” she tells PEOPLE. “We’ve made a life for ourselves here, I’ve created this home here — it feels very much like home.”

“What surprises me the most is that we’ve landed on our feet the way we have,” Lake says. “We still are pinching ourselves that we live here, that we ride the subway every single day.”

“And I’m still healing, but I’m so grateful. I’m so grateful,” she adds. “I choose to be happy. I choose to find the light in the darkness. I do think perspective is so much of it. I have so much to be grateful for this year.”

The Changing Minds Young Filmmaker Festival movie is available for rent on Apple TV, Amazon Prime and Google Play. The 2026 Changing Minds Young Filmmaker Competition is open for submissions now through Jan. 31.