Katherine Jenkins on that OBE scandal: 'This hasn't knocked me. I wish the Beckhams the best'
In the rehearsal rooms of an east London studio, Katherine Jenkins is gearing up to prove herself one more time. Early next month, she will lead the cast of an English National Opera production of Carousel alongside Alfie Boe. She will play Julie Jordan, a millworker, with Alfie as her bad-boy lover, the handsome fairground worker, Billy Bigelow.
‘I know there are a lot of people who doubt I can do it,’ she says in that sing-song Valleys voice of hers. ‘I’m going to be acting for the first time in my life, I’m going to be dancing – and I’m working my behind off to get everything right. The pressure is on. But I get that. It’s up to me to do a good job.’
It is a classic Katherine comment and it comes with a big, well-practised smile. Nothing is being left to chance. She’s spent at least four hours a day with an acting coach for the past two months; she’s read the original Hungarian play, Liliom (written in 1909), on which the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical was based.
She has worked on the dances, discussed the meaning of such songs as If I Loved You and What’s the Use of Wond’rin’? with the director Lonny Price for days. She has researched the lives of 19th-century millworkers and looked into occurrences of domestic violence in that era. ‘I have to know as much as I can, because I can’t let any cracks show,’ she says.
Katherine speaks like someone who expects to be picked apart. And with good reason. This working-class girl from Neath in Wales has spent the past 15 years challenging the prejudices of the classical music world.
When she signed her first ￡1 million record deal in 2003, the establishment didn’t exactly warm to the pretty blonde with a passion for high heels, who regularly appeared in the gossip columns, and who happily described herself as a ‘crossover’ performer without a shudder.
‘I think I was a bit of a shock to the system,’ she says now. ‘It was the same when I arrived at the Royal Academy of Music on a scholarship. I didn’t look like a lot of other people there, and people assume that means you can’t be taken seriously. People expect a classical singer to be big and fat with Wagnerian horns on their head. Sorry. That’s not me.’
But then her first album, Premiere, released in 2004, went to number one in the classical album charts, as did her follow-up, Second Nature, in the same year. Invitations flooded in from the greats of the opera world (Plácido Domingo, José Carreras, Andrea Bocelli and Julian Lloyd Webber), keen for her to sing with them.
I’ve admitted my mistakes – you should tell the truth, whether it makes you look good or bad
She performed for Pope John Paul II and the Queen, launched the 60th anniversary celebrations of VE Day in Trafalgar Square in 2005, sang at the opening game of the rugby Six Nations, and even took to the catwalk for Naomi Campbell’s Fashion Relief in 2007.
Over the past five years, Katherine, now 36, has earned – along with an estimated ￡15 million, an OBE, and runner-up position on the American version of Strictly Come Dancing, Dancing With the Stars, in 2011 – a grudging respect from the music world and a fiercely loyal fanbase.
They have witnessed her deal with the fallout following her confession, in 2008, to taking cocaine and ecstasy in her student days, and the emotional devastation she suffered when she and her Blue Peter-presenter fiancé Gethin Jones called off their engagement in 2011.
However, the past three years, Katherine says, have been the happiest of her life. She married the American film-maker and artist Andrew Levitas in 2014, and a year later gave birth to their daughter, Aaliyah.
Everything in her world seemed perfect – until last month, when she inadvertently became part of a huge celebrity scandal. A series of leaked emails indicated that David Beckham had directed his rage towards her after he missed out on a knighthood in 2014 – the year she was awarded her OBE.
David (who received an OBE in 2003) is reported to have sent an email to his PR manager, Simon Oliviera, lambasting both Katherine and the honours committee. He allegedly wrote, ‘Katherine Jenkins OBE for what? Singing at the rugby and going to see the troops plus taking coke. F—ing joke.’
The apparent email – one of a series of embarrassing messages allegedly sent by him – laid waste to the carefully constructed Beckham brand, with Katherine as part of the wreckage. And although her manager, Jonathan Shalit, has sprung to her defence, so far Katherine has not publicly commented on the affair.
She has met David several times before (including at the Military Awards in 2010) and Victoria ‘only the once at another event’. The smile is fixed in place as she talks, only the blue eyes show a hint of vulnerability. ‘I was in New York with my husband and daughter when it came out in the news,’ she says. ‘We were visiting my mother-in-law. I was really thankful I was there, because in a way it made me a bit disconnected from it all. I didn’t want to be part of that story.
‘When you become famous,’ she continues, ‘people think they know you. They make judgments about you. I always try to be honest. I’ve admitted mistakes I’ve made in my past, because I believe you should tell the truth whether it makes you look good or bad. But this wasn’t something I had anything to do with, this was not my mess. I didn’t want to add to it by saying anything. I’m incredibly proud of my OBE. And amid everything that happened, for the first time in my life I felt I had a lot of people speaking up for me. It’s true that every cloud has a silver lining. I had hundreds of thousands of messages from people saying, “don’t worry, we know everything you do”. That really touched me. That meant more than anything.’
She and David do, however, have history. In 2012 she took to Twitter to deny ‘horrible rumours’ that she had had an affair with the football hero. This appeared to come out of the blue and she later had to deny making the statement as a PR stunt.
You have to wonder whether this could have been a revenge attack by Beckham? She shakes her head. ‘There were so many rumours going round about something between us. It was horrible. There was no truth in them, but my Twitter feed was full of comments. I felt the pressure was so much, I had to stand up for myself and say something.
‘This time it was different. This was something that was apparently said that had nothing to do with me. There are times when you stand up for yourself; there are times when other people stand up for you.’ How will she feel when they meet again at some charity event? Or will she avoid ever being in the same room as him? She gives that smile.
‘I don’t want to be involved. This hasn’t knocked me. I wish them [the Beckhams] the best. But I’m getting on with my life, I’m just doing what I do. I have a good relationship with the Royal Family [the Queen broke protocol to allow her to fly the Welsh flag at her wedding at Hampton Court Palace, and she is a regular guest at rhino conservation events hosted by Prince William]. And when I first got involved with the armed forces it was never with any thought of reward. I do what I do because I’m proud of our soldiers and I think people who fight for our country deserve our respect and time.’
To be honest, I was never a great fan of Katherine Jenkins until I first met her in 2009. Back then, I was presented with the pretty candyfloss coating of Katherine Jenkins Inc, but over the years we have eaten Welsh cakes, talked about her love life and travelled to her home in the industrial valley of Neath, where the locals are impossibly proud of their home-grown star.
I felt the pressure was so much, I had to stand up for myself and say something
‘My home will always be Neath,’ she says. ‘It’s a small place, you grow up knowing everyone and it’s the place that supported me from the start. I was surrounded by amazing singing teachers and lots of strong women and everyone stays in touch. Friends and neighbours from home come to my shows. I call them my Taffia. I’m incredibly proud of where I come from.’
In her research into Carousel, she looked for the strength within Julie’s character. There is a scene in which she is viciously hit by Billy Bigelow, yet she never stops loving him. ‘That has been very hard for me to get my head around,’ Katherine says.
‘There is a darkness to Carousel that people don’t initially realise. Julie was hit. It’s domestic violence, but she still loves him. It made me think about that. I have a friend who I know is being hit by her husband. She’s a strong, successful, wonderful woman and we – her friends – are all very worried about her. But often women in these situations don’t admit it, they refuse to see it. You can’t say they are weak because you know there is a strength there, but you just wait for that strength to come out. There is darkness in everyone’s life.’
She grew up in a less than conventional household. She and her younger sister, Laura, 32, were looked after by their father, Selwyn, while her mother, Susan, went out to work as a mammographer for Breast Test Wales. Selywn was 55 when Katherine was born. ‘I totally adored my dad, but my mother was the strong one. She was the one that worked and she brought me and Laura up with a massive work ethic. She always told us it was up to us to earn our money and have a career.’
When she was 15, Selywn died of lung cancer. ‘I can’t describe what it was like,’ she says. ‘Apart from to say that nothing could ever be worse and everything I do today is motivated by the thought, “this is what my dad would want”. It happened so quickly. We found out he was ill and then it was over. My dad was gone. He was the centre of my life.
‘After he died, I tried to be the one who coped. I didn’t show my emotions. Three years later, I basically fell apart. I started having nightmares about my dad. I went to my doctor and he told me it was grief and I had to deal with it. I knew I’d never be able to move forward if I didn’t.’
She remains closely connected with friends and family from home – not least with Laura, who works for Macmillan Cancer Support. While David may have hinted that she only got involved with the Armed Forces to get her OBE, it was in fact a friend from home who first gave her the idea when she was at the Royal Academy of Music.
‘The grandfather of one of my friends was a Chelsea Pensioner. She always used to say no one came and sang to them. So when I was at the Royal Academy, I went down at Christmas and just sang. They invited me back and that was how it all started. It wasn’t any sort of a plan. It made me sad that people weren’t making a big fuss of these brave old soldiers. And I wanted to do something, to say thank you.’
She has told me stories in the past of missions she has been on to Northern Ireland, Iraq, Afghanistan (2007 and 2013), Kosovo. Of being under mortar attack in Afghanistan and the several aborted trips when conditions were considered too severe. Her mother is terrified each time she goes off to see the troops. But Katherine continues to go and has persuaded the likes of Gary Barlow to go out there as well.
When there, she sits with a different regiment at each meal and she rarely talks. ‘You just listen,’ she says. ‘These guys are scared but they are getting up every day and doing a job that is unbelievably tough, unbelievably dangerous.’
She pauses to laugh at how she can’t now say she is ‘terrified’ of her first performance on stage for the ENO. She adds she can’t say she was ‘devastated’ or ‘hurt’ by David Beckham’s alleged comments because – thinking back to those soldiers on the front lines – she has no right to use those words.
‘I have a husband I love, a child I adore, a job that is a privilege to do and I now have the chance to do this incredible musical,’ she says. ‘I’m a bloody lucky woman.’
Hair: Peter Lux at Frank Agency using Bumble and bumble. Make-up: Charlotte Reid at One Represents using Dior Backstage Pros and Capture Totale Dreamskin Advanced