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Suki Waterhouse covers the new issue of British Vogue with her baby girl, whose name has still not been publicized. Suki and Robert Pattinson welcomed their daughter in March of this year. Before this interview, I honestly thought they were already living full-time in London, but no – they met in LA and they’ve been mostly based out of LA throughout their six-year-plus relationship. Suki covers British Vogue because she’s promoting her music – her new album, Memoir of a Sparklemuffin, comes out this summer. The Vogue piece is full of conversations about her music, but I’m only really here for the gossip (I apologize to all of the Suki-music lovers). Some highlights from the interview:
Her last trimester, nesting mode: She was doing a “complete excavation” of her “Virginia Woolf disaster room” – a fashion and God-knows-what-else dumping ground – to turn it into a nursery; Rob was “doing things he’s never done before, like driving to [shopping mall] The Grove at 6pm on a Saturday evening and staring at Williams Sonoma pans”.
She played at Coachella six weeks after giving birth: “Every mum’s morality is in question so much, not just from yourself, but from society. Everyone’s projecting something onto you. That’s an insane thing.” Take the criticism she came under online for playing Coachella six weeks after giving birth. “Like, honestly, of course [I was thinking]: ‘Holy sh-t, how is this going to work, is this even going to be possible?’” she says. But ultimately: “You just have to go, ‘This is what we’re doing, this is what we’re about and f–k what anyone else thinks.’”
She was one of the last of the old-fashioned It-girls: She wasn’t scared to be a bit messy, to let it hang out a little, to make the most of the opportunities that come your way when you’re young and beautiful. “Didn’t you feel like there was an energy then that’s a little bit lost now? Everything’s become so clean. You would look at all of us and think, ‘Oh, they’re actually having fun.’”
Modeling as a 19-year-old: “It’s not an industry where everyone has their sensible cap on all the time [but] it was a brilliant thing to happen to me really young in a lot of ways.”
Her two-year relationship Bradley Cooper, which started when she was 21 & he was 38: “I really will say that I’m pretty strong at this point, but when something very public happens to you and the story behind it is dark and difficult, and you’re actually not doing well, and you can’t explain yourself to the world, that’s very isolating and disorientating. It probably has taken a decade to work myself out and actually be able to have this expansion in my life.”
Her chaotic relationships in her 20s: “Your 20s are pretty sadistic. The love I experienced [then] was only ever a fetishisation, and I think when you only get loved in that way, you only get punished. When you get into your 30s you’re almost instantly afforded a little bit more respect. It’s kind of delightful and shocking at the same time.”
Whether she & Rob will move back to the UK: “Trust me, it’s at the forefront of our minds.”
Her pregnancy was planned: “No, we really planned it. One day we looked at each other and said, ‘Well, this is as ready as we’re going to be.’ I was like, ‘What can make more chaos?’”
She’s planning a tour but not obsessed with her weight: “I definitely think, ‘Oh, I’m shooting the cover of Vogue and I’m 25 pounds heavier than I normally am right now,’ but it’s also like, ‘Who gives a f–k?’ It is what it is.” (And also? “The boobs are so fun.”)
There was zero prep or classes with her pregnancy: “I really had no concept that there was a baby inside me. Like, I knew that was the case, but I was like, ‘What do you mean? That’s insane.’”
She’s shocked by early motherhood. “Shocking in every way.” She recalls her realisation a baby needs to be breastfed “every two hours. I was alarmed in the hospital when they kept waking me up. I was like, ‘Excuse me? Is this what this entails?’” What got her through the birth was a rap playlist and Pattinson. “He was there with me and like all dads, he was really nervous,” she recalls, “but for someone who’s quite an anxious person, he’s been very calm.” He is “the dad I could have hoped for”, she says. Her eyes go wide and twinkly. “I mean a dad and his daughter? It’s an actual love story.”
She also talks about meeting Rob at a “game night” in LA, a party attended by Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem, and of course she and Rob were drawn to each other as fellow Brits. But they didn’t start dating then – they met again six months later and that’s when things started happening. It’s interesting to hear that the pregnancy was planned, especially given her sort of chaotic post-birth life, performing at Coachella (yikes) and planning a tour with the baby. She’s coming across as “eccentric British.” Also: are we really at the point where we’re romanticizing the bygone era of the early-and-mid 2010s modeling scene?
Cover & IG courtesy of British Vogue.
