In her most candid interview since going solo, GLAMOUR’s Women of the Year 2023 Musician honouree, Leigh-Anne Pinnock, opens up to GLAMOUR’s Ali Pantony about the joy of finally finding herself – and her community.
Leigh-Anne Pinnock has been busy. Busier than normal. No mean feat, considering the Buckingham-residing star spent over a decade between 2011 and 2022 as a member of one of the biggest girl bands in the world. After being paired with former bandmates Perrie Edwards, Jade Thirlwall and Jesy Nelson on The X Factor in 2011 – a competition the group would go onto win – Little Mix racked up five No.1 singles; built a feverish global fanbase known collectively as the ‘Mixers’ (with a consequential 12 billion Spotify streams); and bagged three Brit Awards, including best British Group in 2021 – the first-ever girl band to win the award.
But when I catch up with Leigh-Anne on a drizzly September morning, she seems so calm it’s hard to believe the 32 year old is on the precipice of launching a potentially world-dominating solo career. She has that kind of gentle composure that immediately puts those around her at ease. “So nice to see you again,” she smiles before welcoming me into a hug. We first met at the photoshoot for her GLAMOUR Women of the Year cover back in August, a blisteringly hot day in a Hertfordshire quarry surrounded by a busy gaggle of makeup artists, photography crew, GLAMOUR editors and various agents, managers and PRs.
But today, it’s just us. We’re at Casa Cruz, a high-end yet intimate restaurant tucked into a quiet corner of west London near Ladbroke Grove, and we’ve pretty much got the place to ourselves. Leigh-Anne’s style is effortless and laid-back, dressed in an “ancient” (her words, not mine) plain white Alexander Wang tee, Nike trainers and tan cargo trousers – “probably from Zara, you can’t go wrong with Zara,” she says. Her natural curls hang loose, framing her makeup-free face, noticeably absent of any tell-tale signs of being a mum to twin toddlers.
She welcomed twins with then-fiancé, now-husband Andre Gray – a 32-year-old footballer for Al-Riyadh SC – in August 2021. “I’m exhausted! Having twins is so intense, and we’re now at the ‘terrible twos’,” Leigh-Anne laughs, though she is notoriously private when it comes to her children. She has yet to reveal their names or confirm their gender, and any pictures Leigh-Anne shares of them to Instagram are from the back to conceal their faces. “I want to protect them at all costs,” she says. “When they’re old enough, if they want to be in the public eye, it’ll be their choice.”
Leigh-Anne is open about the transformative effect motherhood has had on her, not only through her love for her children, but her relationship with herself and her womanhood. “Being a woman is so powerful, we have this unbelievable strength and power that men often underestimate,” she says. Does she think she’s had to work harder in her career as a woman?
“Without a doubt,” she says with a chuckle, then a sigh. “It’s definitely easier for men. Come on, of course it is! In so many ways!” she exclaims. “Of course, men struggle, I’m not taking away from that. But in general, I do think it’s easier to be successful as a man. As women, we have so much responsibility and spread ourselves so thin. There are so many incredible women bossing their careers, having kids, and my goodness, we are just something else,” she says passionately. “The fact we can juggle all of that is like a superpower.”
The art of juggling is familiar to Leigh-Anne. She grew up in High Wycombe – not far from where she now lives with Andre and their twins – with her parents Deborah and John, and sisters Sian-Louise and Sairah (now her manager). Both Leigh-Anne’s parents are Black mixed-race, with Bajan heritage on her mum’s side and Jamaican heritage from her father. Though her parents separated, she attributes much of who she is – and her success – to their unwavering support and strong work ethic. In Leigh-Anne’s upcoming memoir Believe (due to be published on 26 October), she describes how her mum worked tirelessly as a teacher to give Leigh-Anne and her sisters a good life, while her dad established his own business alongside working as a champion boxer. To support her dreams of music, aged 18, Leigh-Anne took a waitressing job at Pizza Hut and ‘saved every penny’ to travel to London and meet with people in the industry, while posting her music to MySpace and Facebook. Some months later, she applied for The X Factor.
Now, Leigh-Anne is the one juggling motherhood with work, writing music from her ‘second home’ in Jamaica. Her debut solo single Don’t Say Love was released in June, followed by My Love in September. She also revealed the title for a third upcoming track in a recent interview – Stealing Love. Can she share any further details about the track list?
“I actually got really told off for that, so I probably shouldn’t,” she says with an impish smile. OK, I concede. Any hints on the album’s release date then? “I’m honestly so excited for this album, I just want to tour,” she says. “So, for me, the sooner, the better. It has to be next year.”
Leigh-Anne’s excitement is palpable, a giddy enthusiasm often seen when artists step out on their own after years as a cog in the pop-band machine. Understandable, given that her solo venture is backed by the same record label behind Dua Lipa and Cher, and producers such as Hit-Boy, who works with Beyoncé and Rihanna.
“I’m putting out work that I’m so proud of and that I’m so happy with. I absolutely loved the music we made in the band, but there was always that little thing inside of me that was trying to get out but couldn’t; that was held back. But now she’s unleashed, you’re getting the full Leigh-Anne experience,” she laughs.
It’s difficult to disagree with her. In her new music, beneath her characteristically honeyed vocals, is a diversity of musical textures woven with catchy tempos that perhaps wouldn’t have been embraced by the bubblegum-pop group powers-that-be. “I’m bringing in all those genres that make me me – reggae, R&B, we’ve had a bit of garage as well,” Leigh-Anne explains. Then there’s My Love, an anthemic Afrobeats-inspired track featuring Nigeria’s up-and-comer Ayra Starr. The video was filmed on the bustling streets of Lagos with a cast of (mostly female) local dancers and actors. Was it important to Leigh-Anne to pay homage to Black culture and talent?
“Definitely. I think not being able to explore my culture fully in the group has made me…” she pauses, considering her words carefully. “I want to show people who I really am. A lot of my fans might not realise how beautiful that side of the world is, so it was important to me to show that. I’m so grateful for the old [Little Mix] fans who have come along, but with the type of artists I’m going to be working with and the type of music I’ll be releasing, I think it will lend itself to a new fan base,” she says. “I’m excited to gain a bigger Black fan base, because it wasn’t something we really had in the group.” In the white- and male-dominated mid-2010s UK music industry, Leigh-Anne tells me she became used to being one of the only Black faces in the room.
She describes experiencing a disconnect for many years, a time during which she felt undervalued and overlooked, never quite feeling like she fitted in but not understanding why. “When I first joined the group, I had quite a strong sense of who I was,” Leigh-Anne says. “But it eventually got chipped away. I was obsessed with trying to find my identity in the band – everyone else had their thing – and for so long, I was struggling to find who I was. It took a long time for me to realise, ‘God, maybe I’m feeling like this because I’m Black and it’s just not appealing to our audience as much.’”
It wasn’t until Little Mix performed in Brazil in March 2020 that everything changed for Leigh-Anne. She describes it as her ‘awakening’. “It was the first time I’d seen a lot of Black fans in the crowd,” she recalls, “and it was the first time I’d ever had a reaction like that – they chanted my name first. I was just like, ‘What the hell is happening?’” She appears deep in thought; her eyes fixed on an indistinguishable part of the table in front of us as she recalls the feeling. “It was just a love I’d never experienced. We were having drinks after the show – me, my dancers and Jade – and I couldn’t stop crying. I was like, ‘Why has it taken nine years in the group for me to feel like this?’” She shakes her head wearily. “It cemented the fact that, yes, this is happening because of your race.”
These feelings of rejection – coupled with relentless scrutiny that comes with such a degree of fame and Eurocentric beauty standards inextricably tied to whiteness – resulted in deep physical insecurities. “I was obsessed with the idea of getting a nose job,” she tells me, which was exacerbated after one of the group’s first cover shoots, when “a really big media outlet edited my nose to make it look smaller”. It wasn’t just Leigh-Anne who the outlet – which Leigh-Anne can’t disclose, I assume for legal reasons – unashamedly Photoshopped. Herself and Jade – who is of British and Egyptian-Yemeni heritage – were airbrushed to look “as white as possible”.
“We were really excited to be doing the shoot,” Leigh-Anne says, “but when I saw the pictures back, I just thought, ‘What have you done?’ It made me feel awful. It cemented my fears that I needed to change my nose.”
Thanks to working on her confidence through therapy, treading carefully with social media consumption and leaning on her support network, Leigh-Anne reached a point where she no longer wanted to change her appearance. “I am so freaking glad,” she sighs with relief when I ask her about not going through with rhinoplasty. But this certainly wouldn’t be the last time the two mixed-race members of the group suffered such ignorance. “I also remember when we did our dolls [in 2012], Jade asked them to make her nose a bit bigger, and they got us mixed up, and made my nose bigger,” she says. “It was never proven and it was too late for us to change it, but it was obvious to me and Jade because my nose was so much bigger.” Years later, an MSN article about Jade’s experience of racism at school was published using a picture of Leigh-Anne. “Me and Jade don’t even look alike!” Leigh-Anne exclaims, her voice rising in frustration. “This stuff would never have happened to Perrie and Jesy – ever.”
That’s not to say Leigh-Anne didn’t feel supported by her bandmates. In fact, she’s quick to credit their “beautiful friendship and genuine love for each other”. But being the only Black member of the group – and the racism she experienced because of it – was something Leigh-Anne was internalising and grappling with alone.
It took finally speaking out about race for things to change, an act that helped Leigh-Anne to “just f*cking own who I am”. That moment came via an incredibly emotional and vocal video – a rarity in the age of PR-scribed celebrity soundbites – posted to Instagram as the Black Lives Matter movement reached fever pitch in 2020.
In the video, which has since been removed, Leigh-Anne says: “I felt like I had to work ten times harder to prove my place in the group. It was like there was nothing I could do to be on par with the other girls… How do you say, ‘The reason I feel the way I do is because of the colour of my skin?’”
Fans flooded the post with messages of support and fellow celebrities commented in solidarity. “To hear Black members of other girl groups agreeing just confirmed that this hadn’t been in my head the whole time,” she tells me, her voice quietly cracking with emotion. In particular, Leigh-Anne recalls a message from Rochelle Humes of The Saturdays, saying, “I felt the exact same in my group.” “I couldn’t believe it, I’d never heard her say anything like that before either,” Leigh-Anne says. “We bonded over that.”
Speaking about the effect the post and its reaction had on her, Leigh-Anne shares: “I felt more seen and heard than I’d ever done in my life. That was what I needed. Just for someone to hear me.”
The following year, she released her BBC documentary Leigh-Anne: Race, Pop & Power about racism in the industry, which she’s keen to note wasn’t a byproduct of the BLM movement, but a project that had long been in the works before the protests erupted following George Floyd’s death in May 2020. But the release – which misleadingly promoted Leigh-Anne’s ‘personal experiences of racism and colourism’ – was met with backlash from some frustrated members of the Black community, who questioned why a dark-skinned Black woman wasn’t fronting a documentary on colourism. But Leigh-Anne points out that while colourism was part of the documentary, her role was to interview darker-skinned Black women – including fellow X Factor alumna Alexandra Burke, Sugababes’ Keisha Buchanan and singer-songwriter Nao – about their experiences, which she describes as “f*cking heart-breaking”.
“I didn’t want the documentary to just focus on me and my experiences,” she emphasises. “For years, dark-skinned Black women haven’t been treated fairly or marketed as key assets for music labels. I feel like, had I been a dark-skinned woman, my successes might have been different. I think they wanted Little Mix to have a ‘coolness’ to it [by ‘they’, I assume Leigh-Anne means The X Factor bosses, but she doesn’t clarify], but they wanted it to be palatable. I obviously have lighter skin, and I do have privileges that come with that,” she stops, clicking her tongue as she falters on what she’s about to say. “So, it’s like they got that bit of ‘coolness’ with me, but just ‘the right amount’, if that makes sense?
While Leigh-Anne and I discuss her time in the band in relation to the music industry and everything she endured as a result, it’s easy to forget that at the heart of Little Mix were four – later three (more on Jesy Nelson’s departure coming up) – young women whose undeniably close bond resonated with and brought great comfort to millions of girls around the world. The band announced their hiatus in December 2021, with Leigh-Anne signing to Warner Records in February 2022. I wonder if she’s missing anything about being in the group?
“We did so well; it was definitely a security blanket,” she muses. “Going from that to now being on my own… If I get No.1s or I’m high on the charts, then great. But at the same time, I’m a new artist, and I’m OK with just releasing good music and being proud of what I’m doing. It’s a hard transition and I definitely miss the security of it. But this is my time now.”
And does she miss the girls? “Of course, I miss them, Jade and Perrie are my sisters,” Leigh-Anne smiles affectionately. “There is something to be said about being in a group and just laughing all the time. Doing it on your own can be quite a lonely thing. We always felt so lucky to have each other and go through it together. No matter what, you always felt supported because you had each other. I’m able to express more of who I am now, but at the same time, I do still miss that sisterhood.”
Before the Leigh-Perrie-Jade trio, the Little Mix sisterhood was a quartet. I’m sure almost all GLAMOUR readers will remember Jesy Nelson’s shock departure in December 2020, citing the toll that being in the band had had on her mental health.
“It felt like a breakup, to be honest. It was really, really sad,” Leigh-Anne says. “I think that was normal, after us all being in the group together for so long. It was definitely something that took a lot of getting used to. It was a really hard time,” she says with a matter-of-factness that surprises me. Leigh-Anne is normally extremely reticent about her strained relationship with Jesy after a widely publicised feud in 2021. Leaked Instagram messages allegedly from Leigh-Anne accused Jesy of blackfishing in her solo music video for Boyz, which resulted in Jesy partaking in a scathing Instagram Live with collaborator Nicki Minaj, who seemingly accused Leigh-Anne of only speaking out at that time because Jesy was no longer helping Little Mix make money, and repeatedly referring to her – albeit without naming her directly – as a ‘f*cking clown’.
“It was about a month after giving birth to my twins, and I was suddenly caught up in this horrific online row and toxic Twitter debates,” she recalls. “But the fact that I had just given birth to these two angels is what saved me in that time. Because I feel like I probably would have had some crazy, like…” She pauses. “I don’t know; I would have let it consume me, and it probably would have been bad. But the fact I did have them made me go, ‘Just put your phone down, that stuff isn’t real. This, in front of you, is what’s real.’ The fact I have these two little lives that I have to take care of? Nothing else really matters. God, I just feel so grateful to experience it.”
Her gratitude for her husband and children – and being honest about what it took to get to where they are – is a central theme to Leigh-Anne’s memoir. She knew she wanted children – as did Andre, who “kept bringing it up” – but she grappled with the age-old gruelling decision familiar to many women: family or career. “We were at the height of our career and everyone knew I wanted children, but I remember thinking to myself, ‘I can’t have children now. I’m going to wait; my career is too important to me,’” she says. As a result, Leigh-Anne made an appointment with doctors to check her fertility at 28.
“They told me I had a low egg count, which totally freaked me out,” she says. “So, I started the process of freezing my eggs, just to be safe.” Leigh-Anne hastens to add that the process is gruelling and pregnancy isn’t guaranteed, so it’s not a decision to be taken lightly. But she then changed her mind, citing a makeup artist on the set of the 2021 film Boxing Day, which Leigh-Anne starred in, who told her ‘not to wait’ to start a family. Leigh-Anne stopped the egg freezing process and fell pregnant with her twins not long after.
Andre and Leigh-Anne met in Marbella in 2016, while on separate holidays with friends, and married in June 2023 in a Jamaican beach ceremony, a star-studded celebration attended by Jade and boyfriend Jordan Stephens of Rizzle Kicks fame. Fans were quick to notice Perrie’s absence, which sparked speculation of a fractured friendship, something Leigh-Anne is quick to dispel. “Of course, I invited her!” she asserts when I ask. “She couldn’t make it unfortunately, but she was dearly missed. Jade was there flying the flag, though!”
Leigh-Anne wore three dresses on her wedding day: the first, a princess-style gown with a dramatic tulle skirt and bodice with intricate mesh detailing, featuring a long train embroidered with the words: ‘We’ve crossed the line’; the second, an open-back silver sequin fishtail gown; and finally, a white bustier-style bodysuit with a sheer overlay. “The dresses were by Alonuko” – a detail I haven’t seen Leigh-Anne disclose before – “I didn’t tag it, but she’s this incredible Black bridal designer and her dresses are just phenomenal. It was just a week of celebrating with my nearest and dearest, and having them witness our true, real love.”
At the same time, Leigh-Anne is keen to dispel the myth of the ‘perfect relationship’, something fans can expect to hear more of in her music. “I love love, and I love really hard, so there’s definitely lots of exploring that on the new album,” she says. “Being a mum, being newly married – there’s all the positive side of it, but also the negative side, and how we’ve got to where we are. I wanted to show that although things might look perfect from the exterior, that’s not always the case.”
She continues, “We’ve been through so much to the point where we could’ve split up, but we got through it, and I truly believe we had to go through all that to be the strongest couple we could be.”
Leigh-Anne hints that Andre got himself in potentially toxic situations in the early days of their relationship, when “he still had a lot of growing up to do”. Leigh-Anne isn’t explicit and I can see it's a sensitive subject, so I don't push it any further. She does, however, attribute some of their early struggles to Andre’s environment and the toxic masculinity that exists in the football industry.
“Unfortunately, I think a big part of it was his environment and the stereotype that comes with it, in my case, I found it to be quite true. But I’ve watched him grow, and we’ve come so far. I think people often think that if something bad happens in a relationship – if you get cheated on or whatever – that it’s automatically done, it’s over,” she suggests, “and that’s fair enough. But in my case, I chose to work at it, and I am so happy that I did.
“When you know you have something special, you want to fight for it,” she continues. “If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out. But if it does, my God, it feels great,” she says emphatically.
Much like everything I’ve discussed with Leigh-Anne, this refreshing outspokenness is something she’s only felt able to embrace recently, and is something fans can expect throughout the deeply personal chapters of Believe. “The book is just so open, and there's just so much that I get into,” she says. “I thought my documentary was deep, but this, for me, was like 'bloody hell'.
“Even in the group, I couldn’t have spoken about stuff like this, like I am with you, five years ago,” she shares, “because there was that expectation that everything had to be perfect. I don’t know if the world has changed a bit or if I’m just older and wiser,” she shrugs with a smile.
I can’t let my time with Leigh-Anne pass without asking the question on every Mixer’s lips: “Is there going to be a Little Mix reunion?” She flashes me a warm, knowing grin when I ask. “I think so. I mean, we’ve just started the solo life, so we’re enjoying that. But we’re super close, and we do miss being together. We created such a great legacy.”
But for now, Leigh-Anne is happy just being Leigh-Anne, the artist and woman who had been longing to express herself for so many years. “I don’t have to hide any parts of who I am any more,” she smiles. “Right now, I am just so grateful for that.”
'Believe' by Leigh-Anne Pinnock is out 26th October (Headline). For more information on Leigh-Anne's book tour in London and Manchester, visit believebooktour.com.
European Editorial Director: Deborah Joseph
European Beauty Director and UK Deputy Editor: Camilla Kay
Website Directors: Ali Pantony and Bianca London
European Design Director: Dennis Lye
European Visual Director: Amelia Trevette
Entertainment Director and Assistant Editor: Emily Maddick
European Fashion Editor: Londie Ncube
Talent Booking: The Talent Group
Video Producer: Elizabeth Robert
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Stylist: Rasharn Agyemang
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With thanks to St Michael’s Manor Hotel
