Michelle KEEGAN
LOVE IN THE LIMELIGHT, LOCKDOWN NIGGLES AND HOW SHE BUILT THOSE ABS
Swept up in a whirlwind love affair with fitness, actress Michelle Keegan is now the definition of ‘sculpted’. So, how did the 33-year-old, who once hated exercise, do it? Here, she shares her secret battle with self-consciousness, and the turning point that changed everything
When you’re interviewing a celebrity, interruptions are par for the course. If patchy wifi doesn’t freeze the Zoom chat midway through a juicy anecdote, then a publicist will break from their eavesdropping to warn that your line of questioning is drifting a little close to the bone. But the three times Michelle Keegan and I are forced to pause our nattering – me from my sofa, Michelle perched at the breakfast bar of the Essex home she shares with her husband, the presenter and EX-TOWIE star Mark Wright – the saboteurs are of the canine kind. First, Phoebe, Michelle’s miniature dachshund, has a barking fit; then her chihuahua Pip breaks into a food cupboard left ajar after Michelle shows me a bag of brown rice pasta, a recent discovery she believes has worked miracles in preventing the stomach cramps she’d get from standard penne; then, in timing both comedic and mortifying, my rescue dog Diego starts humping me. ‘Ahhhh, Gem!’ Michelle screams. ‘I saw his paws going around your waist and thought he was giving you a hug. This is hi-la-rious!’ she cackles, a sound that’s warm, hearty and unmistakably of England’s North West; larger-than-life compared to the 5ft 4in frame it comes from, and infinitely less polished than those abs. Yeah, you’ve clocked them already.
Hump-gate is one of many moments during our conversation when I have to remind myself that Michelle Keegan and I aren’t actual friends having a noisy, overdue catch-up; whether it’s discovering a mutual appreciation of badminton (‘It’s so much fun, and by the end of it you’re sweating’), the perils of breaking the seal (‘When you’re out and in a jumpsuit, it’s the last thing you need!’) or whose hygiene standards plummeted the most during lockdown. Spoiler: it was Mark’s. ‘He wore the same shorts every day for a week without washing them,’ she declares, with the gusto of a prosecuting lawyer closing a court case.
It’s been three years since Michelle was last on the cover of WH, at the start of her health and fitness journey.
‘In lockdown, exercise gave me a lift that made a real difference to how I felt’
Today, she occupies a different headspace. ‘I feel happier now in myself than I did then,’ she explains. ‘I’d just got back from filming in Malaysia… my energy had taken a hit by one million per cent. The last time, I wasn’t quite there. Whereas this shoot, I absolutely loved it, I felt really confident – really good.’
Back then, life was busy. Time was split between Malaysia, South Africa and Essex while Michelle filmed Our Girl – the hit BBC drama in which she played the army medic Georgie Lane. Downtime was spent driving up the M6 to visit friends and family in Manchester. Home life was something Michelle could only dream about during her months-long stints away. Then, last January, with a role in Sky comedy Brassic confirmed for a third season and a gut feeling that Georgie should bow out, Michelle quit Our Girl, Covid-19 came a-knocking, and life slowed to a crawl. Michelle and Mark’s pandemic-enforced life pause probably looked a lot like yours and mine. There were unsuccessful banana bread bakes, domestic ‘niggles’ involving the washing machine and many, many jigsaws. Only there are no corona kilos on her svelte bod. In May, struggling with his fitness consistency, Mark did a Joe Wicks and launched a free live online workout series called Train Wright. And while he filmed live HIIT workouts in their garden or home gym, Michelle would be up in their bedroom, watching him on her phone and copying what he was doing. ‘It was funny because I could hear him through the window. So I’d hear him say “burpees” before I saw it on the screen and think:
“Oh no, burpees are coming up.” But we got ourselves into a routine of working out together. Before Covid, he’d always do his own thing and I’d do my own thing, but every morning we’d set our alarms, have our coffees and do a 9am workout. That exercise gave me a positive lift that completely made a difference to how I felt throughout the day.’
If Michelle makes exercise sound easy, and modelling athleisure appear fashion-campaign effortless, her journey with fitness was nowhere near as endorphin-packed as her megawatt grin on our shoot suggests. She’s quick to reply when I ask if she’s naturally sporty. ‘No, I hated PE at school. I’d pretend I’d forgotten my kit because I used to get so embarrassed about always coming last in things. In netball, no one threw me the ball because they knew I couldn’t catch it,’ she admits, voice dipping as she recalls her teenage self-consciousness. She only exercised through choice when she began playing Tina Mcintyre in Coronation Street in 2008, aged 21. Though ‘choice’ isn’t the full story. ‘I used to see [co-stars] going to the gym and I thought that if they were doing it, I should be doing it,’ she explains. ‘Being in the public eye, you’re aware that people look at you; I’ve seen tweets where people have spotted me in the gym and commented on what I’m doing or wearing. So, I used to go on a treadmill, hope no one was looking at me, do a 40-minute run – or try to run – and it didn’t do anything for me: I didn’t feel good afterwards, my body wasn’t changing.’
It was joining Our Girl in 2016 that changed Michelle’s relationship with fitness – and herself. ‘I’ll be honest with you, Gemma, I didn’t
‘I hated PE at school – I’d pretend that I’d forgotten my kit’
think I’d be able to do that job,’ she tells me. ‘First day, I was like: how am I going to pull this off? There was so much training, the military were involved, it was overwhelming. Then I got taken away from my home comforts to film in a foreign country and had to fend for myself. But, over four years, that job made me stronger-minded, independent and a lot more confident.’ She became stronger physically, too. And while it would have been easy enough to shell out for an elite PT to accompany her on the road, a dislike of being watched – arguably ironic for a TV star watched by millions, though possibly a throwback to the school sports field – meant she didn’t hire a trainer. So horrified is she at the suggestion that Mark should adopt that role that she doesn’t let me finish the question.
‘No way. No. Way!’ she rebuffs. ‘Mark’s tried a couple of times and it didn’t work out, let’s just say that…’ Instead, away from home, and desperate to fill her downtime with something, she began to soak up the sports-smarts of her Our Girl colleagues. ‘I was the only woman filming a very male-dominated show, but they took me under their wing in the gym. They asked me what I wanted to do and I’d say, I want to lift weights. Once you learn techniques and someone tells you that what you’re doing is good, you suddenly go, “Oh, okay!” and it builds up your confidence a lot. My relationship with the gym changed because my psychology changed.’
That fitness remains an integral part of her week today is testament to the fact that Michelle has found her fitness sweet spot; the point where sweating through a session and fuelling her body with healthy, nutritious food isn’t a chore, but a commitment she’s eager to keep. On the former, she’s a blitz-it-first-thing exerciser, and she averages four sessions a week, alternating HIIT, upper-body strength, HIIT again, then lower-body strength.
And she goes for it. ‘I do push myself in the gym: if I peak, I’ll try to go over the limits; if I can’t lift any more, I’ll try my hardest to lift again.’ Her nutritional choices are thoughtful, rather than faddy – she eats a lot of greens, avoids red meat and opts for whole grains over white carbs. Her morning workout is chased with a protein shake; in the afternoon, she might have an omelette with mushrooms, onions and smoked salmon, or brown rice pasta with prawns and vegetables, not forgetting the snacks (nuts, lentil crisps or carrots and hummus). Dinner is always fish – salmon or sea bass with broccoli and asparagus cooked in garlic, olive oil, chilli and lemon.
‘It’s different for a woman... I get asked about children, whereas Mark wouldn’t’
If this sounds a bit rigid, she insists it isn’t. In the two weeks between the WH shoot and our chat, there’s been a hanger-induced trip to the golden arches and not a minute of exercise. The difference between now and a few years ago is that she doesn’t feel guilty about it, and she genuinely misses exercise when she skips it. ‘It’s not about my body or how I look, it’s not wearing clothes and thinking, ooh, that’s a bit tight – it’s my mindset. As soon as I’ve been in that gym or done a HIIT session at home, I feel like a switch clicks in my head and I can deal with the day a lot better than I would have done without working out.’
This self-awareness extends to her home life, too. Seeing their phones ‘take over their lives’ during lockdown, Michelle and Mark now implement a no-phones rule when they go out together. She’s consciously cut down on time spent online, too, and reduced the frequency with which she posts about her relationship. It’s a move at odds with the Michelle I meet. Warm as a cashmere rug and a genuine people person, she talks about her other half freely; there’s a no-big-deal quality to it, just Mark in his dirty shorts. Has the scrutiny they come under as a celebrity couple caused her to moderate what she shares? ‘I very rarely post [pictures and videos] of me and Mark together, so it’s not there for everyone to comment on, like, “Oooh, look at their body
language,”’ she explains. ‘And that’s why on social media I stepped back – I don’t want to feed [the stories] any more. I’ve become more confident in my thirties and I’m just not doing it.’ Is there a difference in the scrutiny she receives as the female 50% of a power couple? ‘I do think it’s different for a woman,’ she agrees. ‘It shouldn’t be, but it is. I get asked about children whereas Mark wouldn’t, for example. Why haven’t I had a child? When am I going to have a child? I don’t know what they want me to say. I don’t know what the right or wrong answer is.’
In March, Michelle will wrap filming for Brassic, and I ask if she could ever see herself doing a fitness-based side hustle like Mark. ‘A few years ago, I would have said no. A workout is such a personal thing – it’s you and your body – and I think I’m always going to have that self-conscious feeling,’ she says. ‘But I love how the gym makes me feel. Every time I post something fitness-wise, a lot of people comment and ask what I do. So, I’ll never say never. Because fitness and eating healthily is my lifestyle now.’ As we end our call – it’s 7pm, dinners need to be prepared, naughty doggos need to be attended to – I wave and shout ‘hope to see you soon!’ in a final burst of overfamiliarity. And I’m sure that I will. I think Michelle will always be on our screens. Only, going forwards, confidently in control of her fitness and her personal life, she’s the one directing her moves.
‘A workout is such a personal thing – it’s you and your body’