NATALIE GRAY: THE JOY IN UNCONVENTIONALITY

‘Can’t miss me’, Natalie Gray promises in her Instagram DM. It’s a promise not broken; a flock of cherry-red curls scream ostentatiously, their echo blurring the man at the next table into one of those greyed-out, generic Facebook holder icons. Hair like that would look out of place anywhere but the stage. This is someone who wants to be seen, wants to be heard, and has been caught crimson-handed in her attempt; apologies are given for incarnadine remnants of hair-dye staining her hands. 

Between the shock of hair and the swoosh of Winehouse-esque eyeliner, it might seem like Natalie always craved stardom. Her alma mater, the renowned Italia Conti, boasts a Googleable catalogue of alumni reading like the guest list of one of Elton John’s Oscars afterparties. A cool synth-pop sound, ephemeral to match Natalie’s whimsicality, would suggest she’s unlikely to fall too far short of her schoolmates’ success stories. 

But despite this, centre-stage hasn’t always felt like home for Natalie. She remembers ‘Conti’s’ (her inside colloquialism) as fiercely competitive. The emboldened and enhanced curls of today were then wrestled into submission and ‘singed’ from years of straightening, the result of childhood bullying. Exceedingly shy, Natalie remembers her dream was to be a chorus girl (‘I wanted to be in an ensemble in a show where there’s hundreds of people, and just be one in the back.’) She recalls a teenager seeking not fame, but invisibility - hidden behind mousey-brown hair, wearing plain, inconspicuous clothing (‘I only wore white or black or grey’), a vehement distaste for standing out (‘I remember thinking ‘please, no one look at me’.’) 

And then she hit 20 and thought ‘sod that!’. Her enemies would say she’s loud. But as is so often the case, it seems this loudness is a deliberate taunting of her former bullies, as is the solace she takes in her eccentricity. 

Her pulsating dance music is echoed in her dynamism. Exuding energy materialises as unpainted fingernails pattering rhythmically on the cup of her mint tea, her naturally energetic state not needing caffeinated stimuli in the form of an iced mocha. No surprise she loves fitness, particularly dancing, more particularly ballet. Ms Banks stimulated this passion, a ballet-teacher everyone else was terrified of, but Natalie speaks about with a warmth one always remembers their favourite teacher with (‘We’re friends on Facebook now and that made my life.’) 

So, what does success mean for Natalie? ‘Global domination’ she half-jokes, as if this were drilled into her during her stint at the prestigious star factory. But her real measures of success are crouched not in personal terms, but in what her success can provide others. Acutely focused upon how her music can impact fans, ‘I want someone to listen to it and feel better’ is the only time she repeats herself, as if to amplify her dedication. It’s a dedication that surely pays tribute to strong female musical inspirations, Whitney and Madonna, that a young Natalie aspired to emulate whilst suffering the growing pains of her own individuality.  

But the real goal is to make her family proud. Performing is clearly in the bloodline; her father: a former stand-up comedian; her mother: a former model; her sister: an actress. Her parents gave up their careers (‘they got muggle jobs’) whilst raising Natalie and her sister. A household quite literally singing with happiness, even as she mocks her mother’s lack of musical ability (‘mum is tone-deaf but always singing, you can never tell what.’)

It's a closeness that strikes Natalie as a ‘double-edged sword’ after the past year. In August, her father was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer, which required immediate, aggressive treatment. He’s better now, but it’s obvious from the loss of eye contact that the trauma is still raw. Its reverberations have materialised in an upcoming, deeply personal single, Home Is Where You Are; but even more evidently in a renewed, insatiable desire to make her parents proud. Here, insecurity creeps back in; the type of insecurity that can only enter via the stage door, when the make-up’s off, the mic’s down, and the singer is at their most vulnerable. It’s an insecurity her father tries to subdue (‘you’re an idiot, of course I’m proud of you’, she quotes him.) But Natalie wants to buy him a car – the materialism anodyne, an attempt to express love so deep it’s inexpressible. 

And then the vulnerability is cast aside with a deep exhale, and it becomes evident that perfecting ‘the show must go on’ mentality is part of Conti’s curriculum. Natalie discusses why vodka triumphs over Baileys (she used to work as a cocktail waitress, and sees a Mudslide as a dessert rather than dancing juice). Giggling, she divulges that her dream dinner party would see herself, her family and her boyfriend enjoy a splattering of children’s party food; smiley faces and Quorn nuggets and Quorn cocktail sausages and cheese and pineapple sticks and jelly, she vomits out in a stream of consciousness bookended with ‘yes, I’m a kid’. Proudly declaring ‘I’m a massive nerd’, Natalie describes her love of Harry Potter, disclosing Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) was her first crush – when she reveals Tom Felton loves dogs just as she does, it becomes clear that the crush has retained seriousness long enough to have warranted real research into their compatibility. 

This evening, Natalie is going to see a friend performing in Hairspray, alongside Beverley Knight and Michael Ball. It’s a reminder of her schooling, her friends nurtured for stardom in the breeding-pit of célébrité, now out in the real-world jostling for the spotlight. Yet the prevailing impression from the hurricane of energy, the raw passion for creating art, and the determined espousal of kookiness suggests even amongst this throng of luminaries, it’s more than just the incarnadine locks that separate Natalie from the crowd.