Self Esteem has opened up about her recent pivot to acting, explaining that she has been “rock-bottom depressed because of music”.
The artist, real name Rebecca Lucy Taylor, released her third studio album ‘A Complicated Woman’ last year, an ambitious record that she later brought to life via a theatrical stage show in London’s West End.
Now, she has opened a run in London’s Duke Of York’s Theatre in the lead role of a revival of David Hare’s 1975 play Teeth ‘n’ Smiles. She plays Maggie Frisby, a rock star with self-destructive tendencies that has to reckon with her bandmates when her behaviour becomes a problem. The show runs until June 6.
In an interview with The Independent, Taylor has spoken about the reasons for her diversion into acting, explaining that she felt “knackered” and “fed up” after the intense period around the release of ‘A Complicated Woman’.
“When things went well for me finally, I just got distracted from the actual goal of what music is,” she said, before saying working on Teeth ‘n’ Smiles has helped her to recapture her creative drive.
“I can’t understand being alive,” she continued. “It’s so mental to me. I want to understand it. I want to feel it.”
She said the play has made her realise that she “felt a bit, you know, dead, for a while”, before reflecting: “It’s about going, you know what? Like, it’s ruined my life. Sometimes I’ve been rock-bottom depressed because of music. And I’m like, it’s just songs, though? You’ve got a fucking roof over your head!”
Taylor spoke to NME last year at the Ivor Novello Awards, where she picked up the Visionary Award, and she explained the obstacles that remain for women to overcome in music.
“Not to start going on about women like I always do, but people don’t think women write songs,” she argued. “It still gets questioned. People think I’ve got writers’ camps and all these things. No judgement if you do that, but it’s the art and I take ages over it. It ruins my life and all I do is try to create that art. I need to.
“The older I get, the more tired I am and can’t be arsed to whinge about it. For someone to notice and care and tell me that I’m good at it is like, ‘Thank god for that’.”
Self Esteem will play three outdoor shows in the UK this summer in Reading, York and Cardiff, and will also open for Pulp in Manchester and for Florence + The Machine in Edinburgh.
