When Naomi Scott was 27 she had what she refers to\u00a0now as a \u201cquarter-life crisis\u201d. She had been working as an actor since she was\u00a0a teenager, swapping bit parts in adverts for plum roles in high-profile Disney TV shows and big-budget Hollywood blockbusters including Aladdin (she played Princess Jasmine) and Elizabeth Banks\u2019s Charlie\u2019s Angels remake. She had also married young, after meeting her husband, ex-professional footballer Jordan Spence, at her local church in east London. Worried that the path she\u2019d taken had its destination already mapped out, she felt frustrated, as if she hadn\u2019t really \u201cmourned the other versions of my life\u201d, as the now 32-year-old puts it.\u00a0Part of that process, it turned out, was\u00a0returning to her first love: music.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt I had to go back to basics, to\u00a0a\u00a0childlike writing process,\u201d she explains, sipping a black coffee in a\u00a0vast, sparsely decorated cafe in Hackney, east London, her faded red hair contrasting with the beige backdrop. \u201cJust me on the piano at 14,\u00a0allowing whatever comes naturally to come. So that\u2019s what I did.\u201d Music had always been in her orbit, be it via\u00a0singing in a church choir or later working with the bonkers pop production house Xenomania. Somewhere along the way, however, acting had taken over.<\/p>\n
The result of this refocus is Scott\u2019s debut album, F.I.G. Its title, which stands for Fall Into Grace, also connects to this sense of exploration; Grace, which is Scott\u2019s middle name, became a sort of alter ego allowing her to express \u201cthis version of yourself that you wish you had more of\u201d. Musically, the album is a sophisticated blend of R&B, new wave and soft-focus alt-pop influenced by Peter Gabriel and 90s Janet Jackson, as well as Jessie Ware and Dev Hynes. The latter, whom\u00a0Scott supported at Alexandra Palace in north London last year, adds\u00a0production to the album track Cut Me Loose, helping encase a song about paranoia and self-sabotage in a\u00a0silk cocoon. \u201cDev is my north star,\u201d says Scott excitedly. \u201cHe\u2019s written so many\u00a0classic pop songs, but the way in\u00a0which they\u2019re presented is way more interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n
double quotation markI\u2019ve gone through the whole process of: why do I want to do music? What does it look like in this climate? Where do I fit in?<\/p>\n
F.I.G was started in 2022 and worked on intermittently between LA\u00a0and Norway with producer Lido (Halsey, Mariah Carey). During its creation, Scott combined singing and acting via a starring role in 2024 hit horror sequel Smile 2, playing troubled fictional pop star Skye Riley, who Scott proudly describes as a \u201cmotherfucker\u201d who \u201cdoesn\u2019t give a\u00a0shit\u201d. On the comeback trail after the death of her boyfriend, Riley has to contend with both drug addiction and the more immediately pressing fact she\u2019s been cursed into seeing bloody, deeply traumatising visions. \u201cIt was the hardest thing I\u2019ll probably have to do, but very rewarding,\u201d Scott says of the role, with her committed performance earning her critical acclaim and a position as a new horror \u201dscream queen\u201d.<\/p>\n
Musically and visually, Riley recalls both Lady Gaga and Britney Spears, and it would be easy to assume any sidestep into music would be along similar lines to her character. Scott, however, was keen to do things on her terms. \u201cI\u2019ve gone through the whole process of: why do I even want to do music? What does it look like in this climate? Where do I fit in? What are the\u00a0priorities for me and what does success look like to me? That\u2019s why everything is a little bit more DIY.\u201d The surreal video for recent single Losing You is a case in point. Looking as if it were filmed using a phone in selfie mode, it features a frenzied Scott dabbing her tears using the back of a turtle before shipping herself off to her long-distance love inside a wheelie suitcase.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there are some people that\u00a0want to mould me into different things,\u201d she continues. \u201cBut I am very much girl-in-progress right now. And I\u00a0wanted all the world around the album to have that feel, too. It\u2019s not super-polished.\u201d While she has aspirations for \u201clarger world-building, fun experiences that include a show and choreography\u201d in the future, she\u2019s aware there\u2019s work to do. \u201cIt takes honing your sound, it takes finding the\u00a0right collaborators, it takes experience,\u201d she adds, before taking a\u00a0somewhat circular route back to the topic at hand (she\u2019ll apologise for this compulsion throughout our interview). \u201cI can\u2019t just come in the side door and be this [fully fledged pop\u00a0star], because there\u2019s no substance\u00a0underneath it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having worked in Hollywood for more than a decade and seen up close the pressure of the spotlight, Scott is\u00a0also not terribly keen on being Gaga-level famous. \u201cI think fame is one of the worst things for us as human beings,\u201d she says over a shared slice of banana bread. \u201cThe way that we so easily talk about famous people, talk about people as if we know them, as if we know anything about them, creating narratives around them and just completely dehumanising them.\u201d She puts her fork down, sits up straight\u00a0and grows serious. \u201cImagine you had a\u00a0camera on you. So now you\u2019re consciously thinking about yourself. And then you hear that everyone was saying stuff about how you were acting, so maybe now you\u2019re doing less. But then they\u2019re like: \u2018Oh\u00a0she\u2019s changed.\u2019 You absolutely cannot win, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n
Scott credits her parents with helping her keep her feet on the ground as her career inched towards celebrity. Both her mum and dad still work for the local church, but \u201cthere weren\u2019t these weird expectations on me, which I think a lot of other pastors\u2019 kids have had experiences of\u201d. Her early idols were Christian pop stars such as Stacie Orrico (\u201ca girl of faith, but hot still\u201d, she smiles) and\u00a0Rachael Lampa, though she remembers a particular moment with Britney and her more grownup, 2001 self-titled third album. \u201cI begged my mum: \u2018Please buy me the CD, please buy me the CD,\u2019\u201d she laughs, \u201cand then fast-forward to me putting it on and I\u2019m a Slave 4 U suddenly blaring out. My mum was just like: \u2018Oh, my gosh.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
double quotation markWe need to talk to\u00a0Spotify. It\u2019s got my songs jumbled up a little bit. Because that\u2019s not me.<\/p>\n
However, it was an Alicia Keys song, her ballad If I Ain\u2019t Got You, that proved important in Scott\u2019s career trajectory after she performed it\u00a0during Sunday service. In the congregation was former Eternal star K\u00e9ll\u00e9 Bryan, who immediately saw something in the teenage Scott and signed her to her theatre agency. From\u00a0there Scott was cast in adverts for Coca-Cola and Nintendo Wii, while\u00a0another audition put her in front\u00a0of\u00a0Xenomania\u2019s Brian Higgins and Miranda Cooper, who\u2019d created hits for\u00a0Girls Aloud and Sugababes. Scott\u00a0would often commute to their\u00a0country pile in Kent to hone her\u00a0songwriting skills, which came in useful in later years during various songwriting camps in LA. \u201cI learned so much, but I was definitely coming out with this pseudo-experience because the song could be for her, or her, or her \u2026\u201d she says of those singer-songwriter-for-hire camps.<\/p>\n
While music was something that was just always there, Scott says she fell into acting almost by accident. After landing a role in Disney show Life Bites at 15, she was then cast in the\u00a0channel\u2019s TV movie musical Lemonade Mouth, alongside Bridgit Mendler. A role as the Pink Ranger in\u00a02017\u2019s big-budget Power Rangers film put her on Hollywood\u2019s radar, a move cemented after she was cast by Guy Ritchie as Princess Jasmine in Aladdin. The announcement caused controversy, with some seeing the casting \u2013 Scott is of mixed British and Gujarati Indian descent \u2013 as evidence of Hollywood conflating south Asian and Middle Eastern people. Scott says the backlash was over quite quickly. \u201cOnce I started filming, and once the\u00a0movie came out, it never really appeared in my [world],\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m sure people talk about it and feel\u00a0whatever they want to feel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite Aladdin\u2019s commercial success \u2013 it grossed more than $1bn and was the ninth biggest film of 2019 \u2013 Scott says her life didn\u2019t really change. Fame, thankfully, was kept at bay. \u201cI\u2019m so lucky because the people that come up to me are brown girls from the age of 15 to 30. I have the nicest demographic of people. We just chat and it\u2019s the loveliest.\u201d She says most people want to talk about Lemonade Mouth or Smile 2. \u201cNot even because of Jasmine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her propensity to star in films that also involve singing means her Spotify artist page is a mess, her most-played songs ranging from Jasmine\u2019s A Whole New World to Skye Riley\u2019s New Brain and various powerpop songs from Lemonade Mouth. \u201cWe need to talk to them about that,\u201d Scott laughs. \u201cGet that jumbled up a little bit. Because that\u2019s not me.\u201d Who that \u201cme\u201d is will be outlined on F.I.G, and the music that will follow. Having been working on figuring it all out for the last five years, Scott is getting closer to the answer.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is mine,\u201d she says of the album. \u201cWhen you\u2019re acting, you really are like a colour in a painting that\u2019s being utilised, whether that\u2019s by\u00a0the film-maker or the editor. And with music, you are the artist yourself. You are the painter.\u201d<\/p>\n
F.I.G is out on 20 March on Alter Music.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Naomi Scott was 27 she had what she refers to\u00a0now as a \u201cquarter-life crisis\u201d. She had been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153772,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":{"0":"post-153771","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-queens","12":"tag-queens-headlines","13":"tag-queens-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}