Alexandra Burke has just started a watch along of The X Factor – specifically, the series she won in 2008 to catapult her career. “We started at week one and we’ve made it to week three,” she says. The “we” is her two infant kids, who are two and nine months old, and her sister. “The oldest one can understand certain things now. And my little one was just staring at the TV. And I thought, ‘God, you’re understanding that that’s mummy on TV.’ And watching it actually brought back so many gorgeous memories.”
Burke gave the show many of its most memorable moments, not least a duet with Beyoncé on “Listen” from Dreamgirls, where she had the understandably fangirl reaction of crying her eyes out (“I was a mess next to Beyoncé”) and beating boyband JLS in the final vote – something that still seems to rankle their mentor on the show, Louis Walsh. “My partner [ex-West Ham goalkeeper Darren Randolph] is Irish, and his family sent me a podcast he was on and said, ‘God, Louis is just not over you winning.’”
I dig it out later. It’s the Laughs of Your Life podcast, and Walsh says that Burke only won because her mentor Cheryl Cole “played up” to Simon Cowell, and that JLS “had the best career”. “Where’s Alexandra?” he asks. “What happened? Oh, she’s in the West End.”
“He’s lovely whenever I see him,” says Burke. “So babes, what’s going on?”
As winner, Burke covered Leonard Cohen’s deathless “Hallelujah”, becoming the first ever British female artist to have a million-selling single in the UK. And she hadn’t even wanted to do the song. “I rang my mum [Soul II Soul singer Melissa Bell] crying, saying my voice will never suit that song. She just hung up the phone. I rang her back and I went: ‘Why did you hang up?’ and she went: ‘My daughter’s not a quitter. Call me back when my child is on the phone.’ After half an hour I rang her back and said: ‘I’m going to Whitney-fy it and do it my way,’ and she went: ‘That’s my child! Give it your best shot.’”
Burke was just a 19-year-old from Islington, north London back then. Her pop success was immediate and, for a few years at least, sustained: 2009 number one debut album Overcome accounts for 1.5 million of her five million record sales, which include three chart topping singles. If her most recent album, 2018’s The Truth Is, didn’t exactly set the charts alight, then her growing musical theatre career has made up for it. Burke was in a West End production of The Bodyguard in 2014 before roles in Sister Act, Chess and Chicago led to a pivot to acting; she made her debut in acclaimed 2023 indie film Pretty Red Dress, giving a starrily gritty performance as an aspiring singer auditioning for a Tina Turner musical amidst a gender identity crisis at home. She will also star in upcoming Paramount+ series Curfew (more on which later).
For now, Burke is readying herself for a second go at Sister Act The Musical, playing Deloris Van Cartier – the nightclub performer forced to pose as a nun after witnessing her boyfriend shoot a man – in a reworked production, taking over from her friend Beverley Knight.
We meet one afternoon at the Dominion Theatre, a week or so before opening night. As I’m ushered in through the side of the stage of an empty auditorium, Burke is rehearsing, dressed down, powerfully belting out songs from the show – she has some voice – accompanied by just a pianist. “It’s not the songs from the movie,” she later tells me. “I get so many people asking me, ‘Is it going to be ‘Oh Happy Day’? And I’m like, ‘No, it’s all original music. It’s gorgeous.’”
We eventually sit in Row H in the middle of the grand, stately stalls after perhaps the friendliest hug I’ve ever had from an interviewee. Burke, I find, is incredibly nice, excitedly talkative, admirably open and big on kind gestures: when I leave, she shares the plate-sized cookie from her Deliveroo lunch order (“Thanks, you’ve saved half my calories”). The upcoming general election aside, she’ll talk about anything. “I don’t like to get involved too much in politics. You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t. So I keep my opinions at home.”
She confides she has “a lot of anxiety” about the start of the show. “I’m excited. But I’m very scared as well. This is different for me now that I’ve had two kids.” Why? “I’ve never learned a show with children and that distraction. So it’s taken me longer to get off scripts. And just in general, I’m not the same person I was two years ago before having children. In a lovely way. But I’m different.” She says she won’t be playing the role the same as last time. “I know what I want in my life. And that’s the way that I’m approaching Dolores. She’s very sure of herself. It’s not goofy. It’s a Dolores that takes no bullshit.”
There’s another reason Burke is apprehensive. During her first run touring Sister Act in 2016-2017, her mum became seriously ill. “I had wanted to quit,” Burke says, but her mum talked her out of it. “Her words were, ‘Are you crazy? You’re gonna let people down for me? You get your black ass on that stage and you don’t let your fans down.’” Burke did as she was told, and would drive home after performances all over the country to spend time with her mum in hospital, sometimes sleeping on the floor. After the tour’s final night in Blackpool, Burke made it to the hospital just minutes before her mum died. Bell passed away at 53 after a battle with diabetes-related kidney problems.
“It was a tough time, which I struggle to speak about now,” she says. “I have to be sure that I can cope mentally [with the show]. And I don’t know the answer to that if I’m honest. But what I do know is that I’d love to create new happier memories around the show. I’m gonna dedicate this run to her.”
Burke was incredibly close to her mum, her mentor and confidante, and brings her up constantly. “I talk about her in the present sometimes, which is weird.” It was Bell who recognised and nurtured Burke’s talents. “My mum used to get The Stage newspaper and circle all the big auditions and say, ‘Right, this is what you’re doing.’ At 12, my weekends became just work. Twelve-year-olds are not meant to be doing that. They’re meant to be out playing with other children being 12. It’s probably why I’m such a goofball now. But she saw something in me. I’m really grateful that she pushed me in a way that made it fun. She always asked me, ‘Is this what you love?’”
Bell’s experience helped Burke navigate the choppy waters of both the music industry – she says having her mum there during X Factor meant she was well looked after on the show – and tabloid press. It’s hard to imagine having met her, but Burke has had some terrible press over the years: that she is unreasonable, a diva, unpredictable, difficult.
During her stint on Strictly Come Dancing in 2017, where she came runner-up despite being deep in grief, there were damaging, untrue stories of her violently throwing chairs backstage and a feud with dancing partner Gorka Marquez. “And sadly, the bad ones at times have been when people you think are friends sell, which has been quite sad for me.” Her friends sold stories to the tabloids? “People I grew up with, sadly, yeah, some of them. I don’t know why they did it. They do regret it now. Because they missed out on the friendship.”
It still has an effect: she tells me just last week a woman came up to her in Marks & Spencer, where they had a nice chat about Burke’s kids. “And then she said to me: ‘I was scared to approach you.’ I asked why. She said, ‘Because I’ve read that you’re not very nice and that you’re a bitch.’ Straight as day.” She clocks my shocked expression. “Yeah, I know.” She says her mum would treat all publicity as good publicity; Burke can’t shake it off so easily. “It’s easier said than done. I’ve never been able to channel that ‘I don’t give a shit’ attitude.”
But she’s reached a place where she feels comfortable in herself. During the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, she spoke out in a 15-minute Instagram video about the racism she’s endured in the music industry, including once being told to bleach her skin “to look whiter”. It was something of a turning point: she talks today of a support system of immediate family and small management team that give her the security and confidence to be her true self. “It’s taken me years to find the right people that aren’t going to shaft me and are going to be there for me. That’s all I need. I’ve got my goal.”
The branch out into acting, which she calls “a dream”, is one such result. She’s excited about her TV debut, Curfew. In the thriller series, starring Sarah Parish and Mandip Gill, Burke plays a teacher called Helen – “she’s loveable but you question her morals, I could relate to her” – in a fictional world where men are forced to stay indoors between 7pm and 7am for the safety of women. She expects the show to provoke debate.
“It caused a massive conversation in my household and that was just the audition process,” she says. “Sadly, there are people that have had experiences that should never have happened. But not all men are bad. And not everyone should be painted with the same brush.”
She hints her first album since 2018 might not be far away despite the delay – “I don’t want to rush art” – but for now, the focus is on making Sister Act a run to remember. “It brings so many people joy, and it’s a real privilege to be able to perform in this theatre. I want this show to be an escape for two and a half hours.”
Sister Act the Musical runs at the Dominion Theatre to 31 August (sisteractthemusical.co.uk)