Nadine Coyle on body scrutiny, baby struggles and why she no longer speaks to Cheryl and the rest of Girls Aloud
As she relaunches her solo career the Derry-born singer opens up about motherhood and the distance she felt with her fellow band mates
When Girls Aloud finally won a Brit award in 2009, it was by all accounts the pinnacle of their career – recognition at last after seven solid years of producing record-breaking pop perfection, including 20 Top 10 singles and 4 million album sales.
The girls were all having the night of their lives – except for Nadine Coyle.
“What I most enjoyed about that night was going home,” she says with a shrug.
“I just wanted to be with my friends and have a glass of wine, and I enjoyed doing that way more than any of the rest of it.”
She kept her professional head on, smiling for the cameras and showing her face at the obligatory parties.
But as soon as the opportunity arose, she made a bolt for it.
“It’s never been about the success for me. That has never driven me,” she says.
“It was great to be there, and I still have the award [Best Single for The Promise] sitting in the house, but it doesn’t bring me any joy.
“I’ve never seen it as a sign of achievement or success. So I was there, I went to the parties, but I couldn’t wait to get back home.”
It’s a tale that shines a light on the stark differences in the personalities and priorities within the band.
By this point, Derry-born Nadine, now 32, was living full-time in LA, putting geographical distance between herself and the others and perhaps compounding the emotional disconnect when they were together.
Cheryl (then Cole), 34, Kimberley Walsh, 36, and Nicola Roberts, 32, were – and still are – exceptionally close, a tight-knit trio that somewhat excluded Sarah Harding, 36, and Nadine.
“But it wasn’t toxic,” she insists.
“I just didn’t see them.
It wasn't toxic. I just didn't see them. We all had our own dressing rooms and we’d just meet up to go on stage.
"We all had our own dressing rooms and we’d just meet up to go on stage. If it had been toxic or horrendous I don’t think I’d have been able to do it. I’d have been like: ‘You’re all right, I’ll find another job, thank you.’”
Today there’s no communication at all, although Nadine bears them no animosity.
She says what it boiled down to was that from the offset they had very little in common.
The successful working relationship never became a friendship.
“There was always a distance between us. A lot of the dancers were my friends from very early on, so I’d be going out and finding the local gay bar, which meant that we distanced ourselves.
“I don’t speak to them. I’ve not spoken to them in a long, long time. Sarah and I occasionally speak. Very occasionally. She phoned me before she went into Celebrity Big Brother and I was like: ‘What are you doing?’ I was worried about how they’d portray her. But that’s it.”
Does she miss any of them?
“No,” she replies, simply.
“They were great colleagues and we worked very well together for a long time. But I have lots of great friends of my own.”
Shortly after that Brit win, the band announced they were taking a hiatus, only to briefly reunite in 2012 for their 10-year anniversary.
A permanent split driven by Cheryl, Kimberley, Nicola and Sarah (who’d had enough) but that blindsided Nadine (who wanted to carry on) came about in 2013 following the sell-out Ten: The Hits UK arena tour.
Nadine has spoken of her disappointment over the way the break-up was announced to fans via an impassive tweet after their last ever performance in Liverpool.
She responded at the time saying the decision had nothing to do with her.
“I didn’t know [management] had sent that tweet, and so when I got up the next morning, having been out the night before, hungover, and I saw all this stuff… ‘What is this?’
I literally wrote a tweet saying that I had nothing to do with [the decision to break-up], and that was it.
“So I literally wrote a tweet saying that I had nothing to do with it, and that was it. It was no huge conscious thing, it was just a very hungover thing while I was brushing my teeth.”
All the band members have gone on to carve out solo showbiz careers with varying degrees of success, although only Cheryl has managed to make much of an impact on the charts.
Nadine’s latest project has involved reuniting with Brian Higgins – the producer behind Girls Aloud’s biggest hits – to produce an EP that’s out next month.
In the run-up, she’s been releasing one track from the collection every two weeks, starting with the ballsy Girls On Fire last month, which was followed by the slower-paced Gossip.
Her powerful voice – always by far the strongest in the group – still packs a punch.
“I thought it was a good idea rather than putting it out all at the same time.
"It’s about trying to keep that momentum. It made sense because how we consume music is so different these days.”
Nadine admits she doesn’t have the foggiest about the various charts and playlists of today and how they all translate.
“I’m like: ‘Is that a good thing?’” she says.
“We’re all trying to figure it out. It’s a total education.”
Laid-back and breezy but more than capable of holding her own, slightly kooky and with a dry sense of humour, she’s a curious character is Nadine.
When she says she was unaffected by any divisions in the band, you believe her because she’s also pragmatic – turn up, do the job, go home.
She announced her pregnancy out of the blue in typical matter-of-fact fashion in 2013, when – as far as everyone was concerned – she’d been single since splitting with American footballer fiancé Jason Bell two years previously.
Turns out they’d been together more or less all along.
I've never been one for big declarations or releasing statements.
“Ach, I’ve never been one for big declarations or releasing statements. I’m like: ‘Who gives a s**t?’ No one cares!” she says.
So what about the tweet she sent declaring the relationship over in the summer of 2011?
“I got with Jason when I was 23 and [got] engaged, and I suddenly thought: ‘Hang on. I can’t get married, I’m only 25!’
“I needed to take a wee bit of time out.
"So I moved to New York and I tweeted that we’d split up, but it was stupid because it was just that he was really getting on my nerves.
"I wasn’t going out with anyone else.
"So it wasn’t a case of getting back together – actually we were never really apart. I was just in a really bad mood and I really disliked him for a while!”
Their daughter Anaiya has just turned four, but Nadine isn’t sure that she wants any more children.
“Not right now. I wish she’d have been a twin. I would have freaked out at the time, but now it would be nice.”
It’s not the pregnancy or the birth that puts her off – she sailed through both of them so easily that she told her family in the labour ward that she’d found her “calling” and was considering “doing this professionally”.
She was only half-joking.
But then the pressures of caring for a newborn kicked in, and Nadine found they triggered huge anxiety, which she struggled to manage.
Every single night I put her to bed I wished I’d hired one of those night nannies to sit and watch her breathe.
“The stress,” she says, looking back.
“Every single night I put her to bed I wished I’d hired one of those night nannies to sit and watch her breathe.
"Or that I could hook her up to some sort of system that would let me know if she was too hot or too cold, if her heart rate was OK, if her breathing was right. I’m a worrier anyway, and this was exhausting. My older sister has four kids and I honestly don’t know how she does it.”
Does she think she had postnatal depression?
“I don’t know. I just know it was very, very stressful thinking that I was there purely to facilitate her survival. It’s all so basic but you must do it.
"I have nieces and nephews who I’ve nurtured, but when it’s your own it’s hard to put into words how difficult it is.
"So I would never say absolutely not [about having more kids], but I just don’t know.”
She readily admits that parenthood has put her relationship with Jason through the wringer, and reckons any couple who says differently is being economical with the truth.
“A baby adds more stress to a relationship – you’re up all night and it really is a test. Everything changes. You can’t just go for lunch or dinner or a drink. That goes out the window, and you’re dealing with the serious stuff.
“I know some people say it made everything better. Like, who are you people? I don’t know anyone like that. I reckon you’re lying. I don’t need to feel bad about myself with your lies. Unfollow!”
I still feel too young to get married.
Getting married isn’t high on the agenda either, despite the pair having been engaged for more than seven years.
“I still feel too young to get married. I would feel like I was dressing up for a video or something. It’s definitely more my style to just do it quietly.
“It’s great that people get their day, but I don’t need a special day for that. I can’t imagine how you even plan it. I’m not that type of person – I find it difficult enough to write a Valentine’s card! I’m just not a huge romantic type and getting married is a hugely romantic gesture.”
Last year Nadine and Jason, 39, left their life in Los Angeles to base themselves in London for work.
Californian Jason is working as an American football pundit for the BBC, and Anaiya will start school in the capital in September – a clear sign that they are putting down roots here.
Nadine misses the year-round tan, but not much else.
She says she’s a happier, more confident person than she was in her 20s when the treadmill of being in the band meant she lost herself for a while.
“With the monotony of working so much, you switch off and remove yourself. I went on autopilot. And it was only really in my late 20s that I realised that I couldn’t remember what I was like before.
"I’d ask my friends and family what had changed. I knew I’d felt happier before compared to everything being all mad and crazy, and I was trying to work it out.”
It was about spending time figuring myself out.
From there, Nadine made a conscious effort to change her outlook.
“It was about being more present in the moment. It’s not about where you’re trying to get to. It was about spending time figuring myself out.
“I have insecurities, but they don’t consume me. It doesn’t bother me if my hair’s a mess or if I have a bad skin day. I just don’t look in the mirror!
“And weight has never been an issue that’s bothered me, and my mammy has a lot to do with that. Me and my two sisters are all different sizes.”
It’s interesting that she brings up the subject of weight unprompted.
Her slender frame has often led to speculation about an eating disorder, which she has always denied.
“I have had to do that several times,” she says, seeming aghast.
“I’ve always said the press is something that comes part and parcel with the job.
"You can’t get yourself worked up about it. I know that the only control I really have is with people who are close around me. I know I have a healthy, positive mindset.”
There were reports a few years back that she had been spotted producing a set of scales from her handbag and weighing her food at The Ivy restaurant.
“Oh. My. God. Absolute rubbish,” she says.
“Weighed food? I’ve never even heard of such a thing.”
And she says the trend for injected lips and bum implants baffles her.
I hope we get out of this phase where everyone thinks they need to inject stuff or have implants everywhere.
“They all look ridiculous and they all look the same.
"They’re all paying a fortune to these doctors to make them look exactly the same. I hope we get out of this phase where everyone thinks they need to inject stuff or have implants everywhere.
“I remember going to have a facial in New York, and the doctor was trying to get me to have Botox. I was 22. I said to him: ‘Are you finished? Because you’ve basically just told me to rearrange my whole face so you can charge me a fortune and then you have a recurrent client forever.’
"I gave him quite the dressing down. Disgraceful.”
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Aside from the tour, there’ve been talks about starring in the second series of the hit Channel 4 comedy Derry Girls – creator Lisa McGee hasn’t started writing it yet, but “we’ll see what happens”, says Nadine.
“It’s on the cards.”
She also claims she “wouldn’t rule out” the possibility of a Girls Aloud reunion in the future, possibly in 2022 to mark the 20th anniversary of the band’s formation on Popstars: The Rivals.
If the Spice Girls can do it, surely anyone can.
But she doesn’t exactly gush with enthusiasm at the prospect, and you wouldn’t want to put your house on it.
“Would the others need more persuading?” she ponders.
“Well, I wouldn’t try and persuade them. If they want to do it then let’s do it, but if they don’t, we’ll not. It’s OK. I’m fine either way.”
- Nadine’s EP featuring the tracks Girls On Fire and Gossip is out March 23.
Additional photography: Getty Images, Capital, Instagram/Nadine Coyle
Hair: Stefan Bertin at Frank Agency using Wella EIMI
Make-up: Bea Sweet at LMC Worldwide using Eylure Definition False Lashes 125 Designed By Nadine
Styling: Nana Acheampong
Nadine wears: coat, Mango; boots, S.Novio,: dress, Free People; boots, Office