Suki Waterhouse is relieved to find me in bed, as that’s exactly where she is too, albeit in one over 5,000 miles away. She was worried, she says, that it would look unprofessional. Still, even the most formal of interviewers – never mind this one has no better excuse than laundry drying downstairs – would surely grant her a moment of respite. Waterhouse is in LA for a two-day pitstop, rehearsing with her band and playing a gig. After our call, she’s off to catch a flight to Minneapolis for another show, then on to Lollapalooza in Chicago. So, sure, she can Zoom from bed.
‘I moved out of the LA apartment that I’ve been in for seven years recently,’ she says. ‘So I’m trying to piece together this new chapter and make it feel like home.’
The 31-year-old musician, model and actor is good at piecing together new chapters. She’s already hit the heights in two separate careers: first as a model and then as an actor (you’ll be familiar with her performances in film and TV but, as the SAG-AFTRA strikes are still ongoing at the time of our interview, mentions of them are off-limits). And now she’s focusing on a third, in music. She released her debut album, I Can’t Let Go, in 2022 – think wistful, dreamy guitar ballads with a tender lyricism – and has, in the past 18 months, performed 115 shows. Being on stage, rather than on set, has taught her that she can – indeed, has to – let go. ‘You don’t know what’s going to happen,’ she says, of performing. ‘You have to be in control and also just commit in such an extreme way.’
To the outsider music might look like a sudden pivot, but Waterhouse has been plugging away at it for years: ‘Baby-stepping, getting a bit better every time. If I go back and listen to all the music I never released, it’s like snapshots of time,’ she says. ‘Those years are so precious to me, all the invisible work I did, the tonnes of songs I wrote that just weren’t good enough, and the people I met along the way.’
In those earlier years, while working as a model and finding herself involuntary tabloid catnip, although she had a public profile, ‘it felt like a massive delusion to have anyone take me remotely seriously as a musician, [but] I just believed in it and kept working towards it for a decade. There was obviously a lot of time of feeling quite swallowed up and like, “Oh god, am I ever going to be seen as anything different than what I am at this moment?”’ Now, she wishes she’d known at 21 that, ‘there’s no blueprint of how to survive in this industry. There is space for who you are and what you want to contribute – you just have to make it for yourself.’
Raised in Chiswick, west London, the eldest of four siblings and daughter of a plastic-surgeon father and nurse mother, she was scouted as a model when she was 15. I first met her on a shoot when she was, we think, around 18. I remember her having the swagger, IDGAF style and precocious confidence that comes with being London-bred and very beautiful. So it’s surprising to hear her say that her ‘very eBay, scruffy, punk’ look she had going on back then was something of a diversionary tactic. ‘I was using style as a distraction, to not have people look at my body in its pure form. And I feel like it worked. I was very loud with it, and in a lot of cases I was able to go in there with a bravado and a sense of style that would distract people.’
In her modelling days, Waterhouse remembers, ‘an initial pressure to change myself a lot. If you were different then you’d be sat down and told that you weren’t going to do shows.’ But even if that made her feel uncomfortable or insecure, there was always a self-assured grit, ‘a sense of anarchy and pushing back. I didn’t really believe, “This is the truth, I need to look like this to work.” I didn’t believe I had to be half my body weight to succeed.’ (And she was right. Shooting this ELLE cover – a decade after her first – Waterhouse says she had a strange moment of, ‘Wow! I’m still here.’)
Still, scrutiny only intensified as her celebrity rose. She laughs telling me that there have been internet stories ‘about how ugly my feet are!’, which, yes, is funny – but having people express opinions about what you look like, who you’re dating, who you are, must hurt. ‘When I was younger it was so deeply shocking; horrifying. I guess you just get used to it. Is that bad?’ No, I say; I think in a social-media world it’s probably sensible – and strangely relatable. She agrees: ‘You don’t need to be in the super public eye to have had some kind of experience like that.’ What has helped her is forging a ‘much deeper understanding of, and empathy for, people who write that kind of stuff. I understand the levels of projection that go on. We’re all in this system that is so difficult to navigate as a woman, and I think we’re all just doing our best,’ she says. ‘I also inherently believe in the goodness of people, that we’re all struggling. We’re fighting this ridiculous battle of trying to be a woman.’
Waterhouse describes herself as, ‘a mix of incredibly confident and incredibly f*cked and insecure’. She finds it easier to connect with people when there’s a creative project brewing, a purpose: ‘It’s a misconception that I’m the life of the party.’ The day after we speak the internet loses its mind over a quote Taylor Swift gave to Ssense, reiterating her friend’s duality: ‘When we hang out, I often come away wondering how someone can be simultaneously spontaneous and free – and also preternaturally wise. She is the wildest person I know who I would also trust to keep any secret.’ But although she has found an outlet for her vulnerabilities through her intimate songwriting, performing on stage and releasing music publicly is a different beast.
‘The first show I did I literally went out in jeans and a T-shirt. And I think that maybe it was something in me going, “You don’t deserve to go out and look crazy and done up and super out there – yet. Just be simple, don’t draw attention to yourself.” That was coming from a huge sense of terror of even putting out the first record. [But] that’s changed so much.’ Now, she has fun with what she wears. ‘It’s such a massive part of the show experience, having a visual on stage that is compelling for people to look at for an hour and a half.’
Although she can do full-charge glamour (see the Fendi couture gown she wore to this year’s Met Gala, which she attended with her partner of five years, Robert Pattinson) and is a consummate ‘fantasy dresser’, Waterhouse says that when she’s going about her daily life, ‘I have a weird amount of absolutely don’t care.’
Nevertheless, her offbeat Brit-girl eclectic approach has earned her a 2023 ELLE Style Award. How does she feel? ‘Gleeful! So when things like this happen I get to put it on the family WhatsApp and be like, See! I was right all along!’
This article appears in the October issue of ELLE UK.
