REBELS WITH A CAUSE
MEET THE ELECTRIC NEW GUARD OF MOVERS, SHAKERS AND CULTURE-MAKERS WHO ARE PUSHING THE WORLDS OF FASHION, FILM AND MUSIC TO A BRAVER, BOLDER PLACE
Presenting five rising stars pushing the creative industries to new levels: Celeste Waite, Edward Bluemel, Gala Gordon, Michael Ward and Sophie Cookson
Alessandro Michele can’t get enough of Celeste – and with good reason. The 26-year-old British-Jamaican soul singer had already taken top place on the BBC Sound of 2O2O and snagged a Rising Star BRIT Award. Then, she stole the show front row at the Gucci creative director’s AW2O catwalk in a full scarlet ensemble. ‘I met Florence Welch there,’ she says. ‘She told me she’d won the BRIT Rising Star too, so I asked if she had written an album before she won. When she said, “No!” I sighed with relief.’ Born in LA, Waite moved to Brighton with her mum as a child and wrote her first song at 16. Home is now London, where she’s finishing that debut album with a planned September release. Expect jazz-infused R&B melodies; hits Strange and Stop This Flame are already filling Spotify playlists. Funk singer Betty Davis is her rebel icon. ‘She was unafraid to be a black woman and wear her hair however she wanted. And she was married to Miles Davies, one of my favourite jazz musicians.’ Waite is equally enthusiastic about her musical contemporaries. Of sharing a stage with Harry Styles, Stormzy, Billie EIlish and Lizzo at this year’s BRITs, she says, ‘I felt proud to be in that room. It’s an amazing time to be part of music.’
Whether it’s selling drugs to kids as Maeve Wiley’s brother in Sex Education or as the cocky public school boy Hugo in
Killing Eve, Edward Bluemel excels at being the man we love to watch – and hate. ‘I am definitely not scared to play the pathetic arsehole,’ he says. Born in Somerset, Bluemel studied at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama and says acting was his only option: ‘It wasn’t me thinking I could do this as a job; more that I couldn’t do anything else.’ Now he’s best known as vampire Marcus Whitmore in Sky’s A Discovery of Witches, which returns for a second series this autumn, after which comes a move to Apple TV, alongside Uma Thurman in action thriller Suspicion. When he’s not filming, he lives in south London with friends. ‘Both TV and theatre can be hard on the social life, so downtime reminds me I actually have friends.’ Next on the bucket list is writing his own project, citing Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Michaela Coel as inspirations. ‘I’m currently too fragile to show anyone my writing. There’s this misconception that acting is incredibly creative. It can be, but you also find yourself to be a puppet at the disposal of execs. When I feel frustrated, I look to actors like them who have pushed through.’