Rachel was interviewed by the Irish Independent, released yesterday, the interview took place just prior to the release of her book ‘Finding My Voice‘ (which is available now for purchase)!

Check out the interview below:

The week I speak to Rachel Stevens, she is putting the final touches to her memoir, Finding My Voice, which is published a few weeks after we talk. Read any interview with Stevens, as I did in preparation for my own, and it’s obvious she is not someone who especially enjoys the process or naturally leans towards being forthcoming. She’s always pleasant, and chatty, but not a natural sharer. Writing a memoir must have been somewhat outside her comfort zone, I suggest.

“It’s really exciting but it’s also, I don’t know if scary is the right word, but I’ve had a mixture of emotions around it,” she says. “Because it’s sharing my story right from the beginning to now really, so it’s been quite a process. I found it really intense. An incredible learning experience.”

“I started writing it not long before I went off on tour, so I got really into it, and then I went off on tour and I couldn’t even think about it while I was doing that, because I was on the road and with people all the time. The last few months, it’s just been go go go with the book. It’s been really intense, an amazing learning process. But also hard, too. A mixture of everything, really.”

Going back over everything in her past was a challenge, she reflects, but also the book was difficult because she was pushing against her own nature, which tends towards a preference for being reserved.

“The thing I found really hard is that I care so much about it being really true and honest, and I’ve always been quite a private person. I think that’s one of the things I have had challenges with within the public eye, because growing up in the noughties, we were everywhere, right?” she says of her time with S Club 7.

The group is now renamed S Club, after the death of member Paul Cattermole, and subsequent departure of member Hannah Spearritt in 2023, before the 25th anniversary tour later that year. “I’ve always found that… a conflict, basically,” Stevens says of life in the spotlight. “So doing the book was such a wonderful opportunity to share my story. I’m so grateful I’ve had the opportunity to do it. But it was a big decision also, because I wanted it to be… you know, the title is Finding My Voice, it’s gotta be really honest and really true. I found that quite hard, to be that vulnerable publicly.”

We discuss how when you write honestly about your life, the overriding sense can be one of connecting with others, who may see their own experience in yours.

“When I decided to go public that I was getting divorced, I wrote on my stories (on Instagram). I shared that, and I just remember all the messages I got of love, such lovely gorgeous messages, but also so many people going, ‘Oh my god I’m going through this, thank you for sharing that.’ We don’t realise that when we’re sharing our truth, or talking about things we’ve gone through, there’s always going to be people out there who can relate. Sharing is really special I think.”

Stevens was scouted for the band that became S Club 7, a pop group formed in 1998 by Simon Fuller after he was fired from the Spice Girls, when she was in her late teens. At the time, she was interested in fashion, not music, and just happened to be in the Sony building having lunch with her brother. “I had just finished fashion college. I’d been to the London College of Fashion, did a business course there, wasn’t sure where my career path was gonna go, and I just wanted to get out and work, start earning money, and start finding my feet in the fashion world. Although I didn’t know where that was going. So I started working for some PR companies. I ended up getting a job in a film production company,” she says.

She was having lunch with her brother at Sony Records when she was approached by two producers, “who asked me if I could sing, interested in me for another project they were working on. Cutting a very, very long story short, that’s kind of how I got into the S Club world.” Life in the band was “full on”, she smiles. There was a CBBC children’s TV show, radio promo, touring, albums. “So yeah, it was insane. And when you’re that age, you just kind of go, and you have this energy and it’s different. I’ve always actually had a really strong work ethic,” she adds. “From my first job, I was always very career driven, always knew that you had to work really hard to get the success. And it kind of gave me that buzz. I was someone, especially at that time, who needed to be busy and working and creating and doing stuff. But there were times when — we were talking about it a couple of weeks ago, the girls — how we would actually cry getting out of bed in the morning because we were just so exhausted. We’d finish a late night TV show and then be on Saturday morning kids shows, hormonal and tired. But you know, you have to work hard to get where we got. And we did.”

The band won a Brit award for British Breakthrough Act in 2000, and in 2002 for British Single of the Year, had four UK number 1s, and released four albums before splitting in 2004. After the demise of the band, Stevens launched her solo music career for a time, relocated to Los Angeles where she dated actor Stephen Dorff, then married her childhood friend Alex Bourne in 2009 (they have two daughters, and divorced in 2022), came second in Strictly Come Dancing in 2008, appeared on Celebrity Masterchef and as a judge on The Voice of Ireland, presented on Heart Radio, and appeared on Dancing on Ice in 2022. She met her current partner Brendyn Hatfield, when they performed together on the show.

In 2014, she was voted sexiest woman of all time by readers of FHM. I wonder what she makes now of the lads mag culture, and whether she thinks the current climate is easier on women. “I don’t think it is now to lots of degrees, really (easy on women),” she says. “But I think, you know, back in the day, it was of that moment. Everything changes and moves and evolves. At that time people weren’t talking about mental health, no one talked about this kind of thing. I think we’ve obviously come so far, even from 10, 15 years ago, but there’s still I think a long way to go, in so many ways.”

Leaving the protection and predictability of the band was difficult, she recalls. “Yeah, it was hard actually. Mid-twenties, post S Club, I went straight into doing my solo albums, so I just kept going, going, going. And then the industry was changing, and I was just starting to think: ‘Where do I go from here? What do I want?’ I was actually really lost. I found it very, very difficult to create structure, because it was always something that had been created for me from the age of 18 to 24, 25. So I found that really, really difficult. And it’s something I even still find difficult. I mean I’ve got my girls now, my kids, so obviously there’s structure, but in terms of work structure, I crave that. And I think we all need that, to some degree, don’t we? We all need to have a plan and a structure.”

She describes the challenge of balancing work and parenting.

“It’s just so difficult. My girls, as they get older, I hope will really see that I’m working hard, and I’m a career woman and all of that. They’re like, ‘What do you actually do?’ I mean they saw me on tour. And then when I’m not on tour — my youngest is 10 and my eldest is 13 — I think it’s hard for them to understand what I do in between, they see me doing so many different things. I’ll go to a photoshoot here, and then I’ll record for Heart, and then I’ll go and do an interview. But yeah, the juggle is crazy, isn’t it?”

She is entering the teenage phase of parenting. “And boy do I know it,” Stevens smiles. “It literally happened overnight. It is full on, the hormones, and the whole thing. They need you all the time, don’t they? It’s more emotional attention.”

She has spoken in the past about how becoming famous so young impacted her confidence, something she has felt solidifying in the last few years.

“It’s been lots of… god how do I answer that? It’s such an individual… journey for everyone,” she says slowly, the slight discomfort at talking about herself obvious. “For me, it’s been a long process of… I find it hard to answer the question without going all the way back to the beginning almost, d’you know what I mean?” she smiles.

“I’ve done a lot of work myself, a lot of therapy over the years,” she laughs, “and a lot of putting the puzzle pieces back together. From childhood. From growing up feeling like… I do think it was a generational thing — not to generalise, but I think children of our day had a tendency to be seen and not heard. Whereas now it’s a totally different thing. We wanna talk to our kids about how they’re feeling, and their opinions on things. And I didn’t grow up that way,” says Stevens, whose parents divorced when she was a teenager.

“And then getting into the band. It has taken me a long time to be able to really open up and feel freer. And I mean, I can still feel myself censoring, or going in my head. Because I’m a very deep thinker, and a worrier, and a lot of things have been in my head. But it is very empowering to actually just speak your truth. And I think that’s all it is, just saying how you feel, what you want, and what you need, and doing it in your own way.”

She has always struggled with anxiety. “Ever since I was young. So it’s always something that I’ve had to manage, and that has evolved.” Routine helps keep it at bay, she explains, although that can be tricky as the hormonal changes of a 40-year-old woman need to be contended with.

“You have kids, you have a busy life, diet, all of those things play a part in our energy levels, our moods. You just don’t know where the hormones start and finish type thing. So I’m now starting that journey of looking into what’s going to be best for me in terms of managing perimenopause and all of that going forward. Because my energy levels are so low at the moment. And my sleep. But it’s so lovely talking to women of our age, isn’t it? Again, talking, I think it’s the most important thing. And sharing. Sharing things that work for each other. And it’s finding our own way within that.”

Our interview has come about through Stevens’ role as an ambassador for Activia yoghurts and its push to highlight the importance of gut health to overall wellbeing. She features in the Good Gut Guide series available on the brand’s Instagram. Stevens is an advocate for wellbeing — but not in a pressured way. She was out with friends the night before we speak and describes a conversation in which they commiserated and comforted each other over the amount of information coming at women to improve, to do better.

“I’m trying at the moment to get up early, which I’m struggling with, because my sleep patterns have been really bad recently. I think there’s so many things coming at us all the time: beauty products, exercise products. All these things that people say we should be doing for a healthier life. We were just saying even if you can do five minutes a day, getting outside, or a couple of minutes of meditation; healthy patterns and habits. Doing what is achievable for you. We all know the things we need to do to live as best we can.

“To look after ourselves as best we can, because life goes 100 miles an hour.”

Rachel Stevens is an ambassador for leading gut health yoghurt brand Activia.