Growing up, everyone knew me and Ellen as twins but we were very different — we still are. She likes to tell everyone every single thing she has ever thought and every fact about herself, whereas I’m a little bit more reserved, more private. She has high highs and lower lows and I’m pretty even-keeled.
We are non-identical twins. Ellen is 15 minutes older than me but we both take on the role of big sister at different times. I’m a type A personality, so I like everything to be just so. We live together in east London and I’ll do her washing when I can’t deal with it any more. She’ll make me dinner because she knows that otherwise I’ll eat five lentils and a custard cream.
We were born in Brighton and moved to different places in Sussex, settling in a small village called Steyning from the age of 13. It was very rural. We were going to house parties, then holding our heels and wearing trainers across the fields to get home. Ellen was doing a lot more drinking in the woods than me. I was writing my history essay. When we became teenagers Ellen was definitely the cool one. I was walking around school as Ellen Peters’s sister. My parents would say Ellen’s a star. We still joke now that in her heart she is a pop star and in mine I’m a homebody.
In my teens I wrote hundreds of songs. I’d get home from school, go to my laptop and write three songs back to back, have dinner and do my homework. Songs are like incredibly short stories and I really locked in.
At 15 I was busking in Brighton. Our dad would come with me to make sure I was OK. I would sing Jungle Book songs and Justin Bieber covers. I had a YouTube channel for my original music and met my manager through that but I was doing GCSEs at the time, so I said I’d speak after. When I finished my A-levels in 2018 I signed a record deal with Atlantic and moved to London.
Ellen is an events organiser for a tech company and she’s very good at it. We always go to the print shop together to sort labels, name tags or brochures for her events, then I’ll be reading them all. I’m in the background of lots of her work Zoom calls.
Moving to Gingerbread Man Records — Ed Sheeran’s label — in 2021, I got to keep a lot of my original team, but having Ed’s expertise and support was a no-brainer. He first heard my music through mutual friends and we ended up meeting. I went to his house in Suffolk and we made some music together. I’ve been on tour with him. He has continued to be supportive and such an important person in my career. I always say I’m a one-woman Ed Sheeran promotional team.
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Ellen was always coming to my gigs and bringing her university friends. I’ve been a huge Taylor Swift fan my whole life. My bucket list dream was to support her on tour, which is quite specific, but I really did achieve it, opening for Taylor’s Eras tour at Wembley in 2024. It was the greatest day of my life; a crazy, pinch me, surreal moment. On stage, I got to the end of the massive walkway. I wasn’t wearing my glasses but I looked up and saw Ellen in the crowd on our friend Olly’s shoulders. Then she got shown on the screen. Afterwards she joked she was thinking, “How can I make this moment more about me?”
Maisie with Taylor Swift in August 2024, when she opened for the Eras tour at Wembley Stadium
Living together this past year has been great. Funnily enough, we are the most twinny we’ve ever been. The corner-shop men know us as a duo. Then we thought we should live with someone else to stop us regressing to our childhood ways. So now there’s four of us living together — us and our boyfriends. We call it the princess palace and the boys are afraid of us, but I think that’s a healthy dynamic to foster.
Our Twinhood podcast showcases my life touring the world and Ellen’s life as a corporate queen. When it came to who I was going do a podcast with, there was only one person fit for the job. Ellen has always been the funniest person I know and the most outrageous. She talks a lot about having ADHD and we offer a cool perspective on a neurodiverse-neurotypical relationship.
I feel as though I’m one of the only authority figures Ellen respects. She’s my princess and my kryptonite, and I can’t say no to her. I’m the biggest enabler. I’m, like, anything you want, queen, you shoot for the stars, you deserve the moon.
Ellen
People find twins fascinating. Some say we have the same nose and mouth, but we’re very different in personality. From a young age I wanted to be different. I did rock climbing and the Sea Scouts and Maisie did ballet. She always loved music too. I remember in school I had a music project and I got her to do it. I didn’t want to sing, so I made her.
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I always tell her how clever she is. She’d go up to London for music but also be revising for her A-levels. She got all A*s. In my free time at sixth form I would go home to watch Loose Women. When Maisie got a manager, that’s when it started to be a bit different. There’s a big chunk from about 15 until after uni when we just didn’t see that much of each other.
Ellen, left, and Maisie as babies in 2001
I work for a start-up tech company and I love it. I show Maisie my LinkedIn and Slack and she’s fascinated by it all. I’m her “normie” sister. At any corporate event my favourite fun fact is that I have a famous one.
Her success wasn’t overnight. It has been a long road since she was 15. I find it so cool. Whenever she gets stopped in the street I’ll always be the first person to take a picture. I was never jealous. It would actually be harder if she worked in event management because I’d be constantly comparing.
I always said at one point in my life I want to live with Maisie. I feel as if I’ve got my party girl era out the way now. I’m not sure she’d have liked me coming home at 3am. We love a cosy night in and a home-cooked meal. I’m messy. She picks up after me; I cook for her. So we are kind of a yin and yang.
I got diagnosed with ADHD just after university. I definitely felt as though the symptoms were getting more visible as I got older, so I got tested. It’s not for everyone but for me it’s nice to have a label. Maisie’s very good for me — she’s calming and empathetic. I find it so amazing that she’ll come back from playing Wembley and just take off her make-up and read her Kindle. She is driven and high-achieving but also this very sweet soul. She’s the least pop star, pop star.
Maisie’s latest album, Florescence, is released on May 22. New episodes of the Twinhood podcast are available every Wednesday
Strange habits
Maisie on Ellen
Ellen has a SpongeBob dressing gown from when we were kids. It’s so small but she just will not give up on it
Ellen on Maisie
She likes to sleep with her socks on and then kick them off in the night. She finds it comforting