THE RISE & RISE OF ROCHELLE Red’s cover star Rochelle Humes on her hugely successful career, family life and why she has left music firmly behind her
PRESENTER, AUTHOR, WIFE, MUM, AND NOW ENTREPRENEUR, LIFE SEEMS PRETTY SWEET FOR ROCHELLE HUMES. BUT, AS SHE TELLS MEGAN CONNER, IT’S THE CHALLENGES SHE’S FACED ALONG THE WAY THAT HAVE HELPED HER APPRECIATE THE HERE AND NOW
when I arrive at Rochelle Humes’s cover shoot inside an airy minimalist mansion in Surrey, the TV presenter’s long-serving make-up artist is loitering in the open-plan kitchen, poised with a kit bag and brush. We’re at the end of a long, chilly day in winter, and Humes has spent the past few hours posing by a swimming pool in beachwear. In the kitchen, a plate of untouched brownies sits on a vast island. ‘The thing about working with Roch is that the days are always long,’ the make-up artist says. Minutes later, the 30-year-old breezes in all smiles and hellos and, at the photographer’s instruction, sets herself down on a pink sofa. As the darkness of night sets in, the camera clicks and the views of the mansion’s sprawling gardens disappear.
‘It’s sort of the way I do it now, cramming days,’ Humes says when we’re eventually sat on another sofa, her cross-legged in black joggers, sipping a peppermint tea. ‘I’ll work all the hours of one day so I can be at home the next doing the school run.’ As such, every hour is accounted for. ‘On a typical day, I might be doing a segment on This Morning, then go straight to a meeting that I’ve purposely booked to be opposite the studios. I’ll shoot something in the afternoon, then I might attend an event…’ She chuckles when I tell her I’m exhausted just listening. ‘Now I have a family, it’s all about making stuff work.’
Gazing at Humes’s world from a distance, ‘stuff’ is clearly working out. Not only has she settled into family life with husband Marvin and their two daughters, Alaia-mai, six, and Valentina, two, but in the past year or so her career has taken an upward turn. The run began in the closing months of 2018, when she was drafted in to cover for Holly Willoughby on This Morning and has continued with BBC One’s The Hit List, the Saturday night music quiz show soon to return for a third series. As well as being the ‘first real project’ Humes has worked on with Marvin (‘we did a brief stint hosting This Morning together after we had Alaia, but nothing since’), the BBC show has proven a ratings winner, prompting producers to air the first two series almost back to back. ‘The last series beat The X Factor,’ she says. ‘Given Marv started his career on that show [as a member of boy band JLS] and I worked on it [hosting The Xtra Factor alongside Melvin Odoom in 2015], that has been crazy to us.’
In person, Humes is chatty and open, much as she is on screen. But despite the sunny exterior, she’s one of life’s pragmatists. She admits that for a long time the couple avoided working together for fear of it being cheesy. ‘After This Morning, we were approached by lots of people, but didn’t want to be that couple who work together as a “brand” – that’s not us at all,’ she says, visibly cringing. After turning down work (‘we could never agree on things we liked’), they were eventually persuaded to pitch their own idea to a production company. ‘The Hit List is basically a game we play at home every Christmas,’ laughs Humes.
Elsewhere, the former singer (first as a member of the band S Club Juniors then with The Saturdays) is busy with collaborations for New Look and M&S Food (‘My face is on the oranges,’ she says proudly) and with a follow-up to her first children’s book, The Mega Magic Hair Swap!. This month, she’s also turning entrepreneur with the launch of My Little Coco, a range of children’s bath products. ‘It’s something I’ve been working on for three years, ever since I was pregnant with Valle [Valentina],’ she explains. ‘It’s been a complete labour of love. The concept was the easy part; it’s all coconut-based because I’ve always used coconut oil on the kids, but the rest has been a real challenge.’
‘It needed to be authentic and mum-tested,’ she says. ‘Can I pump out the product with one hand while holding my baby in the bath? Is this a range that I can use on both my six-year-old and my newborn? These are the things I wanted in a product.’ As well as devising the brand’s stable of seven products, Humes has taken responsibility for having them tested by paediatricians and dermatologists, and even pitched the products to retailers herself. ‘I think most people send their agents,’ she laughs. ‘But this isn’t me just slapping my name on something – I’ve created it.’ As if to prove her point, the packaging doesn’t feature her name at all.
Integrity is clearly important to Humes. When I ask why she wanted to write her own children’s book, she says it was because she couldn’t find a book to read to her elder daughter that dealt with loving your own hair. ‘Alaia was starting to notice differences between herself and her friends,’ she recalls. ‘First it was skin colour, then it was hair. And there are only so many times you can say that there should be more Disney princesses with curly hair.’
It’s clear that family is the thing that drives Humes. And yet, when you start to examine her past, it becomes apparent that her relationships with her own have been somewhat complicated. Growing up on the border of Essex, for the most part of her childhood she was raised in a single-parent family, owing to the fact her father left when she was a baby. ‘For a really long time, it was just me and Mum – she was sort of like Wonder Woman because my relationship with my dad was non-existent,’ she remembers. ‘But by the time I was 17, I’d become curious.’
With the blessing of her mum, she tracked down her father and, on his invitation, drove herself round to meet him at his house. ‘I’ll always remember that because I’d just passed my driving test and I was so nervous,’ she says. ‘But I was open-minded; my mum had been very good at not talking negatively of my dad.’ As it turned out, Humes got a reality check. ‘When I got there, that’s
‘MARV AND I DIDN’T WANT TO BE THE COUPLE WHO WORK TOGETHER AS A “BRAND”’
when I realised he had two more daughters and a son that he was raising. Bless her, my mum had always said to me, “You know, some daddies just aren’t very good with daughters – mummies are better with girls.’’ Before that meeting, I had it in my head that he was going to tell me there had been a reason for him not being around.’
‘So, yeah… that was a shock,’ she adds, grimacing. ‘It was the realisation that there was this guy playing dad over here to other kids – the same dad that couldn’t parent one,’ she shrugs. ‘I couldn’t understand it and still don’t. So we had a couple of conversations and
I was like, “Nah.”’ She hasn’t seen her father since.
Still, in the past two years she has reconnected with the half-siblings on her paternal side, an experience she
says has been ‘strange but life-changing’, partly owing to the fact it was through Kem Cetinay, the former Love Island contestant, that they were re-introduced. ‘Kem went to school with my one of my sisters and he’d said to her, “Now I’m in the industry, if I ever meet Rochelle I’ll try to get her number for you.” In the end, I met him at my agent’s Christmas party,’ she recalls.
At that point, Humes hadn’t seen any of her siblings for more than a decade. ‘It wasn’t a decision I took lightly,’ she adds, wide-eyed. ‘God no, I was absolutely terrified. In fact, I kept saying to Marv, “Have I opened a can of worms here? Should I be doing this?” And he was like, “Roch, this is a sign.”’ She got in touch and, after two days of texting each other, they all met for dinner at her friend’s restaurant.
It’s safe to say that it went well. The sisters are now so close that they speak every day. ‘I think the key to it all is trying not to overthink the relationship,’ she rationalises. ‘And it helps that the kids don’t know any different; they don’t remember a time when Auntie Lili, Auntie Sophie and Uncle Jake weren’t around. But it’s not like we’re all sat there braiding one another’s hair. We’re all quite different,’ she says. And yet, I observe that they all look scarily similar.
As we speak, Humes’s youngest sister, Sophie Piper, is appearing on the latest season of Love Island, and their physical likeness has not escaped viewers’ notice. ‘It’s the same with both my sisters,’ Humes chuckles. ‘It was like looking into a mirror when I met them,’ she adds. ‘Growing up, I think that was weird for my sisters, because they were always being told they looked like that [singer] Rochelle.’
Meanwhile, on Humes’s side, she grew up as the only mixed-race person in her mum’s otherwise white family. ‘The heritage on my dad’s side is Jamaican, so at times I felt that was missing,’ she admits. ‘It’s situations like when you go to family parties and people would say to my cousins, “Oh, you look like so-and-so, my goodness!” Then they’d turn to me and go, “Ah, Rochelle. Oh, Rochelle, you look pretty.”’
‘So thank God I had Uncle Paul,’ she adds, with a smile (Paul being former footballer Paul Ince, a close family friend). ‘When I was younger, I always believed he was my uncle because we looked alike, and I think my mum let me believe that for a while. It just goes to show… your family aren’t always blood.’
Such is their bond that Ince was the man to give Humes away at her wedding in 2012. ‘He still checks in on me constantly. When I landed the S Club gig aged 12, he was the one we called,’ Humes laughs. ‘At the time he was playing football with Jamie Redknapp, who was married to Louise, then a massive pop star, and he asked her to get in touch with me – she was brilliant. She got someone to look over everything and gave me loads of advice.’
Six years on from leaving music behind, I wonder if Humes would ever go back? ‘Absolutely not,’ she says, sounding a little horrified at the idea. ‘I mean, I’m grown up enough to never say never, but no, I really can’t. I don’t know how people do it. I don’t think that lifestyle would work for my family at all.’ And yet, she can see Marvin reuniting with his old group, JLS, at some point. ‘The boys are still great friends, so I think that one’s just a matter of time.’
‘MARV IS THE DAD I WOULD HAVE GIVEN MY RIGHT ARM FOR’
For now, though, the couple’s arrangement – taking it in turns to work and doing a 50/50 split of the childcare – seems to be working for them. ‘We’re realistic about that,’ she says. ‘We know that if we want one of us to always be there as a constant for the kids, we can’t both shine at the same time.’
Humes says creating her own family unit has enabled her to heal old wounds. ‘It’s definitely given me the closure I was searching for when it came to my dad,’ Humes admits. ‘When I had my own family, I just wasn’t fussed about that any more. There are times when Marvin’s chucking the kids up in the air and they’re saying, “Daddy, get off me!” and I shout, “Noooo! Let Daddy!” Because they don’t know how lucky they are. Marv is the dad I would have given my right arm for.’
In another sense, she says, he’s also the husband her mum always wished her daughter would have. ‘I think the thing my mum loves the most, aside from all my jobs, is the fact I have a husband.’
‘I do realise how lucky I am,’ she adds. ‘I look at how things were for my mum and it amazes me that she did it by herself. All those little things when you have a newborn and you’re young and up in the night – it’s so hard. I definitely found that the toughest part of becoming a mum, but I was lucky enough to do it all with Marv.’
She smiles. ‘You know, sometimes we joke about the number of family members who are constantly coming in and out of our house. Honestly, our house isn’t like this,’ she says, gesturing to the pristine, now almost entirely vacant upper floor in which we sit. ‘But I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s family,’ she says. ‘It’s what we’re here for.’