Paloma Faith suddenly breaks into an impression of a TV voiceover. “How do I cope with my stressful life? I just let it keep going!” She has often wondered whether she might be a workaholic, because she has always taken on as much as possible. At 26, she took on the responsibility of her younger sister, becoming her legal guardian. At 43, she is an actress, singer, writer, podcaster and single mum of two. She has certainly accomplished a lot – what she has yet to do is find equilibrium.
“I do therapy and all that to try to figure it out, but I just don’t. My body is constantly telling me [to slow down]. It’s always giving me some stupid ailment, because I’m unable to stop.” As the daughter of a single mum from Hackney, north London, hard work seems like a compulsion. “If I’m honest,” she pauses. “I work too much and too hard just like my parents did.
“My mum is a massive influence. When I was about 17, she ended up bed-bound for three years. She ended up with chronic fatigue syndrome and had to take early retirement.” In the early 90s, doctors didn’t understand chronic fatigue. Faith’s mother went through test after test until the condition was finally spotted. “It’s basically just like experiencing complete burnout. She is always worried about it happening to me. She said: ‘I’m watching you do exactly what I did.”
Faith’s relationship with her mother crops up throughout our conversation. “Although I have siblings from my dad’s other relationships, I was her only child, so the relationship is quite intense and tight. Growing up like that wasn’t a bad thing. It made me quite self-sufficient. It’s one of the reasons why I get on with stuff. I always had to.
“My mum worked full-time as a primary school teacher, so I had to busy myself, because I didn’t have someone to play with if she was marking or working. I think that’s led to me being the way that I am. I’ve got initiative. I get on with things. Hyper-independent.”
Today, Faith has two children of her own, aged three and eight, but she is still that hyper-independent only child. Last year she released an album and a memoir, and has now released a new podcast while writing a script for an
undisclosed project.
Her motherhood journey hasn’t been easy. After her first daughter was born after several rounds of difficult IVF treatment, she suffered from postnatal depression and experienced psychosis following severe sleep deprivation. “I started to feel angry as soon as I’d had a baby,” she says. “I just didn’t know what was happening. My frustrations began then, because I was like, ‘This isn’t what I thought it would be.’ What’s expected of me doesn’t suit my personality.”
In her memoir Milf: Motherhood, Identity, Love and F**kery, Faith details the painful realisations, and rage, that comes with becoming a mum in a world designed for men. She had long believed in feminism when it told her she could have it all – until she realised that having it all simply meant doing it all.
This build-up of resentment eventually led to her divorce and the end of a 10-year relationship. She details a story about roasting a chicken and then pausing the dinner to deal with their crying baby. On her return, her ex had finished his plate of food. She threw a chair at him.
“I remember very early on after having our baby, like, after a few weeks, my then-partner said to me: ‘I just don’t know what to do.’ And I was like: ‘Why do you think I do?” she says. “There’s this idea that because you’re a woman, you just know what to do. I still don’t know what all the cries mean.
“We are stretched, and I’m so stretched still because it’s so in-built in me to feel that I should be doing everything. There’s part of me that wants to be really present as a mother, but also in my career, because I am aware that when my kids get to a certain age, they are not going to be that interested in me any more. What will I have left?”
Then comes the guilt, which Faith, like many women, often feels. “What annoys
me is the shaming of women who aren’t naturally inclined to be a certain type of
mother, which I’m not,” she says. “I’m not the kind of all-baking, ready-for-cuddles-all-the-time mum. I’m more like a Therapy Mum. What’s really going on with them? Why are we having a tantrum about that? I treat my kids like human beings and I feel I really know them as a result. I try to reject things that society pressures us to be.”
After the split, the couple underwent separation therapy. “I didn’t know it existed. My therapist told me about it. I wanted to create a space where I could ask my ex the questions myself, rather than bother my children with it. I wanted to be able to call him up and say, have you got a girlfriend?” she says.
“I was raised in a toxic dynamic after my parents separated, mainly because of my dad. That was difficult. He’d be bitching about my mum, and it was awful. I didn’t want that.” The sessions have been useful in overcoming this resentment. “Now we’re good friends.”
Faith isn’t afraid to explore these difficult topics. “I often wish people would ask me something deeper,” she says. This is how she has found herself on the opposite side of the recording mic. Her new podcast, Mad, Sad & Bad, which launches next week, is a therapy session for the stars – starting with Alan Carr and moving on to Mel B, Rupert Everett, Jameela Jamil, Katherine Ryan and more – disguised with laughs and cameos from her mother, friends, and friends’ children. “I didn’t get my neighbour in it in the end, but I’m going to have him on season two if all goes well, because he’s really good to chat to.”
What’s behind the podcast’s name? “People often call me bad, but that’s usually when I’m being my authentic self. I think because of my neurodivergence, I don’t view rules as necessary unless there’s a good reason. And so people say, ‘Oh, you’re so naughty.’ I don’t think I’m quite as naughty as a lot of people who pretend to be great then do awful things behind the scenes.”
Faith was recently diagnosed with ADHD, although she doesn’t medicate herself for it, “because it doesn’t stop me from living a full life”, she says. Instead, she clings to a strict daily routine. The day starts at 7.15am. Faith gets the kids dressed and fed and then takes them to school. After that, she rushes home to fit in the gym, which she does four days a week until 10.30am. “Then I’ll shower, get ready. I’ve got a nanny who comes at 11am because the youngest only does a half-day at nursery.” Then she starts work.
“I’ll be writing something – a book or whatever – doing interviews or writing music in the studio all day and going to meetings, or if I have an acting job, I have to start 5am but that’s a bit different. Or sometimes I do two podcasts in a day.” She tries to finish by 5.30pm, but social media takes up a lot of her time: “I am always having to make more content.”
Like most single mums, Faith’s evenings barely slow down. “I high-five with the nanny on the way out as we switch at 5.30pm, then I’ll make the dinner and talk to the kids about their day. I will read bedtime stories to everyone. I practise reading with the eight-year-old – that usually ends about 8.30pm – and then I’ll catch up on anything I’ve missed work-wise.” Faith is often travelling. When her children are asleep, she tries to prep for any trips. “I’m going to Switzerland soon to do something at an ice-skating show, so I have to go online and buy thermals.”
Then she will either have a night-time singing lesson or therapy on Zoom. “I’m
normally done by 10pm. At that point, I will watch something or read my book
to try to wind down.” Her favourite part of the day is reading to her kids before they go to sleep. “That’s when we really engage, because something in their mood drops, and they really open up and have all sorts of questions. My eight-year-old is really fascinating at the moment. She is asking lots of quite existential questions.”
Most people presume, or Faith believes they presume, that she is a “s**t mum”. “Being in the public eye, lots of people are quick to shame me,” she says. She mentions the media storm that erupted after she said that she would raise her daughter as gender-neutral.
“Lots of people started giving me death threats and saying that I was an abusive mother and my kids should be taken away from me. I was like, ‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I’m just talking about children being who they are and not judging them for it.”
This anxiety has stayed with her. “I went on holiday over Christmas with my kids, and I had people comment on what a good mum I am, in a surprised tone,” she says. “I think people see pop stars with kids, and they assume that I’ll be on holiday with a nanny, which I’m not. They think I might be too busy thinking about myself to parent my kids, which I’m not. I really enjoy their company. I really love being a mum.”
Against the odds, Faith has found time for dating. “When I was in my long-term
relationship with my kids’ dad, I was always a bit jealous of people on dating apps as it sounded fun. And then I went on them. It wore off quickly. I’ve met people who really shouldn’t be on there.” She thought her fame would shield her from the worst of the dating apps., “I think I felt a bit cocky. Because I’m in the public eye, I had that smug thing where I thought: ‘Ha ha! Wouldn’t you like to go on a date?’” She laughs. “I think men like feeling abused.”
As we talk about the state of modern dating, Faith’s phone buzzes with news
notifications. “Oh my god. Trump is the first president to call for new
American territories, including Mars,” she laughs. Then she laughs some more.
“I wonder how the racists will feel about Martians coming to Earth?” It’s a classic Faith comment: slightly edgy, funny, unbothered.
“Sorry, where were we?” she says. What did the people you went on dates
with do? “Some dark shit.” She tells me a story about a man who started masturbating on a video call. “I just laughed at him, but I don’t think it would be nice if I wasn’t the old and experienced person I am,” she says. “If I was 22, I would be devastated.”
Faith is now off the dating apps. “I’m actually seeing someone and quite pleased that I am,” she says. “I feel quite safe now.”
The first episode of ‘Mad, Sad & Bad’ is available from 28 January
