Mae Muller on her acting debut and life after Eurovision: ‘You get lost in the record label rat race’

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What does Mae Muller take into consideration her efficiency at Eurovision final yr? “I don’t!” the 26-year-old hoots. “And I don’t have to watch it again – thank you!” With her monitor “I Wrote a Song”, Muller represented the UK on residence soil, carrying a nation’s mighty expectations on her shoulders – solely to finish up inserting twenty fifth out of 26 entrants. She can snort at it now however admits that it was exhausting. “The pressure was insane,” she tells me. “Would I do it again? I don’t think so. But I got a lot of positives from it, and Graham Norton knows who I am now – that was really my life goal.”

Muller has since taken a step again from pop stardom. She had hustled for years, posting demos on-line and releasing two EPs earlier than signing to Capitol Records. But whereas it ought to have been a profession peak, she ended up feeling as if she was making music for the ears of executives and not for herself. “It had been bubbling in me a bit,” she says. “All I ever wanted to do in music is to write songs and to do shows. That’s it.”

Instead, she discovered herself at the mercy of the British pop music machine. Sorry I’m Late, the album she launched off the again of Eurovision, positioned at No 33 on the charts, whereas her most profitable singles tended to be nameless EDM numbers, her vocals pasted onto tracks by DJs similar to Sigala and Marshmello. “I was being put on these big dance tracks,” she says. “I think they’re great songs but it’s not what I started this for and it’s not who I am as an artist. You get lost in that rat race label mentality. I was making music purely to try and impress people, rather than doing what I love.”

So she’s stopped – quickly, anyway – and change into a film star. This week, Muller may be seen in director George Amponsah’s Gassed Up, a gritty thriller about Ash (Boiling Point’s Stephen Odubola), a teen in a moped gang who steals to assist his 14-year-old sister and addict mom. But when his group will get combined up with an Albanian crime household, Ash struggles with the ethical penalties of his actions. Muller performs Ash’s love curiosity Kelly, a fairly, smooth-talking and outspoken “It-girl” who lives close by. I inform her that the character appeared to suit her like a glove.

“She’s a young girl from London, she doesn’t take s***, she doesn’t take messiness from people and she knows who she is,” Muller says, enthusiastically. “I was like… ‘I can do that! I can play a mouthy girl from London!’ I can just improvise it the whole time, you know?”

Muller hails from London’s Kentish Town and says that she was drawn to Gassed Up as a result of it promised to characterize the metropolis authentically. “It doesn’t show what you would see on tourist leaflets but all the characters actually have a softness to them as well,” she says. “You get to see they’re good people, and that sometimes people are pushed into things they don’t want to do.”

The movie is Muller’s acting debut… when you don’t rely some very vital early work. “I was the friar in Romeo and Juliet at my school, so I’m well seasoned,” she jokes. “I used to audition for the school production every year and I never got the main part – I was always so distraught by that. I was like… do you not see there’s potential right in from of you?’” Muller is a pure thespian. She pouts, she gesticulates, she flicks her hair. She’s all sass. And, like her character Kelly, totally outspoken.

This did get her in bother round the time of Eurovision, as she grew to become a goal of right-wing media for resurfaced tweets in which she criticised the Conservative authorities for its Covid insurance policies. Today she expresses gratitude for the assist system put in place for her again then.

“If you are sending an artist to Eurovision who hasn’t had as much experience, they need to have support on deck,” she says. “Have a therapist there, have a life coach, a media trainer person because it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before. It’s doable and it’s exciting but the pressure is insane. I was really lucky. I had an amazing life coach, who was sort of a media trainer-slash-life coach. She really helped me through.” She was additionally supplied with days off at any time when she wanted a break. “A lot of artists don’t have that. Everyone involved is just pushing them and pushing them.”

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It’s very true of younger ladies in music, with a January report performed by the Women and Equalities Committee (WEC) discovering that misogyny is “endemic” in the business. It acknowledged that “female artists are routinely undervalued and undermined, endure a focus on their physical appearance in a way that men are not subjected to, and have to work far harder to get the recognition their ability merits”. When I repeat this again to Muller, she says it’s one thing she is aware of all too properly. Only final month she found a photograph taken throughout a Birmingham Pride efficiency, in which her breast had briefly been uncovered, had been unfold on-line.

Muller tells me she’s a “liberated person”, and that it wasn’t the wardrobe malfunction itself that was the subject. “It was a crowd full of gays, you know, which is like my safe space. So I’m like ‘Oh, no. My boob fell out… Oops!’.” What bothered her was that the photograph was being broadly shared with out her consent. “Being a woman on stage, performing in front of thousands of people… you’re really vulnerable. Sometimes things happen like a wardrobe malfunction. You kind of trust that no one’s going to expose that or make a bigger moment out of it.”

It’s simply one more reason why music has lost a little bit of its lustre of late. So for now, Muller is all about the massive display screen. “I’ve got an acting agent,” she declares, flicking her hair dramatically over her shoulder. “But my main priority is that I want to be really good. I want to be getting acting classes… I don’t want to get things because ‘Oh, Mae Muller might be quite good for that’. I know I have more work to do.”

‘Gassed Up’ is in cinemas