大象传媒

1. He believed he’d win Pop Idol

Will decided to enter the singing competition Pop Idol after seeing an ad in the papers. “I said to my friend… ‘I’m going to win it.’ I just knew I had to get onto TV.” He saw it as his only way to make it as a singer. “Who was going to sign an openly gay, posh politics student who doesn’t even write his own songs?... I thought, ‘I just need to get in front of an audience.’”

On the stage, I鈥檓 a monster. I want it all. My ego鈥檚 massive鈥� Off-stage, I couldn鈥檛 want it less.鈥�

Will reflects on what it means to be in the spotlight

2. He always dreamt of being famous

“I wanted to be a singer – a famous singer – from the age of four,” says Will. Because he’d always wanted it, he very quickly accepted that the level of fame he reached after Pop Idol – which was huge – was “normal”. He experienced more pressure than he’d anticipated, but says he hardened himself to it. “I thought, ‘It comes with the territory.’ If anything, I became a bit steely. I remember my late brother (his twin, Rupert, died by suicide in 2020) saying to me at the time, ‘You’ve become a bit cold.’ I think I was so shut off to it.”

3. He has a massive ego on stage, but not off

Will doesn’t really consider himself ‘in the spotlight’, except when he’s performing. “I don’t know if I like the spotlight off the stage,” he says. “On the stage, I’m a monster. I want it all. My ego’s massive. I want more laughter. I want more applause. I need it. I want you to validate me. Tell me I’m amazing, laugh at my jokes, applaud. Literally a monster. Off-stage, I couldn’t want it less.”

4. He refused to lie about being gay

Among friends and family, Will was openly gay before auditioning for Pop Idol. During production of the show, he was pressured to hide it. “I was told not to say anything. I just told them I wasn’t going to do that. I said that if someone asked me outright then I’m not going to [lie]. I didn’t go through that process [of coming out] to then lie. But no-one ever asked me.” Will publicly came out in a newspaper interview, shortly after Pop Idol ended, after another newspaper threatened to out him. He says he found the whole thing caused “unnecessary stress”, but “I was not going to live a lie.”

5. He was once told to kiss George Michael for publicity

Even after coming out, Will was told to minimise his sexuality. “Even in 2009, I did a beautiful black and white video (for Let It Go) and at one point I’m dancing with a male mannequin. The record company said, ‘We want you to cut that out of the video’ – too gay. I had a record company executive, who I won’t name, who said I sounded too gay on Leave Right Now, so I needed to re-record it.” He didn’t. He remembers an effort to get him attention at the Brit Awards: “Someone suggested I could only get on the Brits if I kissed George Michael, like a sort of freakshow… ‘You do a duet and then you snog at the end.’” He turned down the request.

6. It was years before he felt in control of his career

It took Will a long time to feel like the music he was putting out was entirely his. “I didn’t feel fully in control of my music until I did a song called Jealousy,” he tells Rylan. By that point, 2011, he’d been a popstar for almost a decade. “It took me nine years. I don’t think I ever realised that until I just told you. I thought I had control a lot sooner. I think I was a bit scared. I was very pleased with the songs [before 2011], but I don’t think I was finding them.”

7. He has sometimes enjoyed fame

As much as he found being famous stressful, Will says he did find time to actually acknowledge and enjoy what he’d achieved. In 2005, “I went out to LA to do the American premiere (of the film Mrs Henderson Presents, in which he has a supporting role) and I’d just done a video in Cuba. Third album coming out, on the red carpet… It was amazing. I thought, ‘This is literally like a film.’ And I’m really glad I did enjoy it. I remember lying in the pool, looking up and thinking, ‘This is all because I entered a talent show.’”

8. He had a year of being horrible

Shortly after that premiere, Will remembers he let the fame go to his head and had a year of being awful. “The ego got too big,” he says. “I wasn’t trusting people… I wasn’t coping very well with people lying. Particularly in TV, people do lie, and I didn’t like it and I didn’t deal with it very well. I lost all my grace. I don’t think I was very happy. I fell back on, ‘Well I’m just going to be rude to people.’ I thought I was too nice – people always said, ‘Oh he’s so nice’ – and I thought being nice was not the way to do it, you needed to be strong… I think I went too far. Now I realise being nice and treating people well, it’s quite a good thing.’”

9. He's happier than he thought he could be

Will openly discusses his mental health challenges and the treatment he’s sought. Even while talking about some of his lowest moments, he jokes about it with Rylan. “I think you can approach mental health with seriousness and humour at the same time,” he says. “That’s what I try and do.” He says he’s suffered with anxiety and suicidal thoughts but is now at a place where he feels capable of managing his mental health. “You get this sort of resilience,” he says. “You still have to live with it, and I’ll probably always be trying to resolve it in some way, trying to understand my emotional ups and downs… I feel I’m back in a place I didn’t think I would ever get to. I didn’t think I’d be back doing pop music as good as I’m doing now. And enjoying it.”

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