Vogue Williams on turning 40: "I feel like I'm in a good spot"

RTÉ News​

7 days ago

Someone who seems to have the Midas touch in her life and career, Vogue Williams – podcaster, entrepreneur, presenter and now author – talks to Janice Butler about sharing her life story in her new book, Big Mouth, why she doesn't embarrass easily and being in a good place as she turns 40.
The week before I chat with Vogue Williams, I was getting my Friday fix of her podcast with comedian Joanne McNally. During their chat, she confesses that she's anxious about the release of her new book, Big Mouth, a reflection on her life so far and the hilarious and sometimes sad twists and turns along the way. She says she is nervous about what the media will pick up on and the usual clickbait headlines that are part of being in the public eye.
There's been many iterations of Vogue Williams over the years: the Howth native first came to people's attention as a model in the mid-Noughties and star of the ground-breaking reality TV show Fade Street. She then went on to be a successful TV presenter with her Vogue Williams Investigates documentaries.
Her marriage and divorce from Westlife star Brian McFadden made perfect tabloid fodder. After that stressful time, she moved to London to recreate her life. That's exactly what she has done.
Now, Vogue is a queen of podcasts (she currently has three!) and is happily married to former reality star, Spencer Matthews (whom she met on reality show The Jump) and the couple have three young children (Theodore, Gigi and Otto).
She has a successful business too, with Bare by Vogue tanning products, clothing collections, a fitness app and of course, she is the voice and face of Fairy Non-Bio ('click-clack'). It's an impressive portfolio; I'm tired even thinking about it!
Her podcasts brought her to a whole new audience, breaking down people's preconceptions of her and giving a "sense of the real" Vogue.
"I think people thought I was very different to what I'm actually like and got a sense of the real me when I started doing the podcast with Spencer and my one with Joanne. When you're on social media, you only see a snippet of someone's life, but when I'm on the podcast, I'm very much myself," she remarks.
Now, with Big Mouth, she's revealing more of herself with her trademark humour. While the book is packed with stories from her life, she's hesitant to call it an autobiography. How does she feel now about its release?
"You can take any sentence out of context, and it doesn't really lend to what the book is, or the tone of it," she answers. "There's going to be things that are of more interest to people, and you'll get the clickbait headlines, but I think I'm kind of over those nerves now, although I was feeling that way for a while," she adds.
"I wanted to write a book that's hopefully interesting to people; there's been a lot of things in my life that I could have done better, and maybe people will learn something from those that I didn't. I wanted to entertain people with this too, I want it to be a book that you take to the beach and enjoy reading."
When we chat, she's sitting in a stylish room in her house (in another life, Vogue got a degree in construction design and management), which people may recognise from her social media. The room is as chic as the woman herself, with a sleek blonde bob and flawless make-up.
Her youngest son, Otto, is calling through the door, keen to go scooting with her. It's hard to appease a three-year-old when they're on a mission. She promised him she won't be long, apologises and we continue our chat.
While she's very open on her podcasts, the book covers parts of her life that she hasn't discussed publicly before. Yes, she does get Botox: "Everyone already knew from Joanne and I's chats. We'll still be gorgeous when we die," she laughs.
More serious topics include her divorce from Brian McFadden and the impact of the death of her father, Freddie, when she was in her early 20s. Big Mouth charts her childhood in Howth, with her siblings Amber, Frederick (she's the youngest) and step-brother Alexander.
She deals with her parents, Sandra and Freddie's divorce, when she was seven; her subsequent relationship with her mum Sandra and step-dad Neil, who she's very close to; and with her dad, who she describes in the book as 'fond of the drink."
"I always said I'd never write an autobiography because I didn't know how to approach it. I didn't want to throw anyone under the bus, it's not really my style. But I realised there was a way to do it without calling out people," she explains.
As someone who can't remember what happened last week, I tell her I was impressed by how much of her childhood and teenage years she could recall. "I remember snippets and, of course, the funnier parts," she laughs. "When my mum read it, she said 'There's a lot of drinking in this book' and I genuinely don't drink that much.
"It's quite nostalgic and an Irish childhood is very different to any other," she continues. "We spent a lot of time in the pub with my dad, but even in terms of the freedom you had, you'd go off on your own for the day. I'd never do that with my kids now, they just won't have that life here in London."
She refers to her mental health quite a bit in the book and her battle with anxiety, which she manages now through exercise and a healthy lifestyle. She's very open about the benefits she gets from seeing a therapist.
Did she find digging back into the past and getting it down on paper therapeutic?
"It was. It was one of the only times I've ever just been focused on doing one thing because I had such a short window to write the book. Writing it all down, I learned a lot about myself, about my anxiety and where it might have started, and that was really interesting. When you sit down and put it all out there, you think 'Oh that's why I'm like this'."
Her father, who spent a lot of the latter part of his life in and out of hospital, passed away in 2010 when she was 24. She says it changed the trajectory of her life. She reveals in the book that she escaped the reality of it all by moving to Australia with her then-boyfriend, singer Brian McFadden.
The pair quickly got engaged and married, but in the book, Vogue admits it all happened too fast, and she realised quite soon after their wedding in Italy that she'd made a mistake. They went on to divorce in 2017, and reflecting on it in Big Mouth, she admits she felt embarrassed at the time by how public the end of their relationship was.
Looking back on her dad's passing, she says it took her a long time to process it, and it was hard to revisit the emotions when she was writing.
"I don't think I grieved properly at the start; I was just going through the motions with everything, and that's when I ran away for a while. I didn't start to grieve until I would say two years after he died, and even now, I get sad when I'm doing things that I know he'd love to be doing," she says. "Grief is a funny thing. Even writing down the stories about my dad, I got to remember how fun he was. He was a really good dad to us. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be to put all that down.
"It's just terrible that he can't be around for so many things; like he'll never meet my kids, and that's really sad because he loved kids and he'd have loved hanging out with them."
She always had the itch to be on stage or screen, or "get attention", as she says in the book. While she's better known for her TV and modelling work, she also went to the Gaiety School of Acting and spent a month at the prestigious RADA in London when she was a teenager. She jokes now that she hadn't a clue what she was getting herself into with the latter.
"I don't know if that trip was about RADA or me moving to London for a month," she laughs. "I didn't know it was a Shakespearean theatre of acting until I showed up and thought: 'What is this?' I got into it, though, sword fighting and all that.
"I just loved the whole world of acting, and that hasn't changed. Sometimes when you're doing TV, you have to pretend to be a version of yourself, which is acting in a way. I loved drama and dance growing up; I loved everything about showing off," she laughs.
Reflecting on her career to date, the good and the bad, she's happy with where it's led her. "I'm not embarrassed by anything I did back then. Even modelling, back in the day, it was such a ridiculous concept of having us all standing on a shopping street in a bikini to promote something. But I had such a fun time with all the girls, and everything has moved me on to the next stage in my career. I'm here now because of everything that's gone before," she says.
Is she proud of herself? "I'm Irish, I don't think we're allowed to say we're proud of ourselves!" she laughs.
At the moment, Vogue has three podcasts on the go: My Therapist Ghosted Me with Joanne McNally, her solo project, Never Live it Down; and Vogue & Amber, with her sister, who replaced her husband Spencer earlier this year.
"I loved doing it with him, but not towards the end because I knew he wasn't enjoying it," she says of his reason for leaving their pod. "He has his own one now that he loves, whereas the things I like discussing with Joanne and Amber are not up his street," she laughs.
While she now lives in London, her home town of Howth, where she's recently renovated a house, is where her heart lies. Would she ever move the family back permanently? "I love the idea of it, but I think so much of my work is over here now, so it would be really difficult for me to go back full-time. But I love going home so much and I want the kids to have friends there and to be friends with my friends' kids and have the same love for Ireland that I do," she replies.
Without giving anything away, the last chapter of Big Mouth is titled 'Fantasy Future Plan' where she describes a fictional future life plan, but what's the real five-year plan, I wonder?
"I'd like to focus on doing a bit more TV, and then I'm going to start writing my fiction novel," she reveals. "I've three ideas in my head and I'm meeting publishers next month. I have a feeling which one they'll go with. One is more of a TV show idea, so if I write the book, it's possible it could be made into a TV show, so it's just to wait and see which one they think will work better.
"I'm giving myself a long time to write it, though. I've never written fiction, so I'm going to do a course in the summer and make sure I have a proper understanding of it," she adds.
Vogue turns 40 in October, and in a way, this collection of stories feels like a bookend as she enters a new decade.
"I feel like I'm in a good spot at the moment, and I'm looking forward to turning 40. I'm not dreading it at all," she says.
"I think your 40s are meant to be a great decade. I've had a really good time in my 30s, especially my late 30s, and sure, aren't we all lucky to be ageing, 'cos we're still here?"