‘I had to fight tooth and nail’: Amber Davies on Strictly trolls, Love Island hunks – and her no-brainer blonde legal story | platform

AAt the end of last year’s Strictly Come Dancing semi-final, professional dancer Nikita Kuzmin made a plea to the camera, “Speaking to the audience at home: Guys, just please, please be nice!” His famous partner, Love Island winner, Dancing on Ice contestant and musical theater actor Amber Davies, has been subjected to a lot of criticism online. “You had so much hate every day,” Kuzmin said.

Wouldn’t it be crazy to remind people to be nice to other humans who are just doing their jobs, I say to Davies, when we meet in a London hotel bar. “I really think it’s getting worse,” says Davis, who has been in the spotlight since 2017. “With TikTok, when people jump on the bandwagon, they go on,” she adds. “But I feel for the bad comments I’ve been receiving [on Strictly] It wasn’t actually coming from the younger audience, it was coming from the older audience.

Davies belongs to the “just ignore them” school of thought and radiates positivity with a bright, perfect smile. The 29-year-old from Denbigh, North Wales, is a girl-next-door charmer. It’s Monday morning but she looks exactly like Friday night: dressed up for a photo shoot, pristine makeup outlining the sweet angles of her face, hair slicked back, and ’80s gold earrings. Davies is warm and open without giving everything away. She’s steeped in the language of personal growth and being her best self, the kind of person who would share on her musical theater podcast, Call to Stage, slogans like “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone,” and it rings so true.

We’re here to talk about her tour with Legally Blonde the Musical, but we can’t ignore the cultural juggernaut Strictly, in which she reached the final. Yes, being part of it is good as everyone says: “Being in the Strictly bubble, it’s so magical. I’ll never experience anything like that again. I feel so sad, it’s over.” No, she doesn’t think the format needs to change, and she doesn’t have any suggestions for new presenters. Her experience on set has never been anything less than supportive, but it still stings when people are horrible to you online.

Many people were saying she shouldn’t be there because of her previous dance training (she was last-minute standing in for an injured Danny Dyer), but fan favorite Lewis Cobb also had dance training and was not abused. “Well, I’m a woman,” Davis says, adding, “I’m ambitious. And I’m a woman.” [people think] Confidence comes through being stuck. But if you’re too nice, you’re fake, so you can’t do anything right. There was a newspaper article about her being a singer, and that bothered her more than the online comments (“At the end of the day, not everyone is going to like everyone”), because she felt like a story was being built about her. “And I just want to say, none of this is true!”

Davies has been here before. When she got her first big theater job, after Love Island, in the musical 9 to 5 (in the role of Jane Fonda), people couldn’t wait to say she was a talentless reality TV presenter who didn’t pay her dues. Except that Davies has been dancing and singing since she was young, putting on shows with her older sister Jade in the living room, which they would charge their grandmother £1.50 to watch. At the age of thirteen she was coming to London to train, and moved there at the age of sixteen to study musical theater at Urdang. Obviously it’s a vaccination.

Davies was scrambling for work after graduation (cruise ship, backing vocals) when she was approached by ITV dating show Love Island, via Instagram. “I had the summer of my life,” she says without any regret. Do the people on this show really believe they’ll find love? “Yes,” she says immediately. “And I know that my truth is that I truly fell in love.” She broke up with her boyfriend, Kem Cetinay, after five months (although she told me she still keeps in touch with his mother, who is totally into Davis’ very wholesome, family-oriented brand), and although she enjoyed celebrity parties, there was something missing: musical theater.

Since receiving positive reviews in 9 to 5, Davies has also starred in Bring It On, Back to the Future, Pretty Woman, The Great Gatsby, and now Legally Blonde, where he plays Elle Woods, Reese Witherspoon’s character from the 2001 film. “When I heard he was coming back on tour, I had to audition for him. It was a dream role for me,” she says. The story of a fashion-obsessed sorority girl who becomes a Harvard law student is consistent with the film, even though it is set in the present day.

There’s a cartoonish element to Elle, with her pink wardrobe and handbag-sized dog, but, says Davies, “When she went to the audition she played her as a very human, and the director, Nikolai [Foster] He wants to take it in that direction. You have to recreate it through your life experience. After all, Davies knows a thing or two about how to underestimate herself. “I feel like I was meant to play this role because I had my own version of it. It would literally be amazing,” she says, in an Elle Woods kind of way.

Fans of the film will be happy to hear that Elle’s famous “bend and snap” move is still present in Leah Hill’s choreography, but Hill — most recently assistant choreographer on the Wicked films — has ideas of her own. “She’s very unique in her way of thinking, and she’s ahead of the game,” Davis says. “It doesn’t stick to one genre or one style – there’s one section where we go from hip-hop to ballet in one breath. It’s one to watch.”

Most of Davies’ roles were in adaptations of popular films – “movie musicals pay the mortgage!” – And it’s practical in terms of what that means for theatrical works. “This industry is very tough. It’s a lot easier to attract an audience if they’re familiar with the story. It would be nice to have space for original and brand new musicals, but I think in this climate, we don’t see a lot of interest towards those.”

With more than a million followers on Instagram, Davies must have a similar appeal to casting directors, although she’s quick to say: “I’ve had to fight tooth and nail for roles… I don’t think I’ve ever been given a role I didn’t deserve.” She’s also quick to support others, especially her sister Jade, who will tell you she’s the most talented person she knows. Jade got a job on Les Misérables when she was 19, and has been working ever since, often as an understudy, which means studying multiple roles in the ensemble: “This is 10 times harder than what I do.” Davies says it was Jade’s reputation that gave her legitimacy within the industry when some people thought she was just a reality TV wannabe.

Davies’ friend, Ben Joyce, is in the business as well. They met in the musical Back to the Future (he played Marty, and she was Lauren, his mother). He’s an impressive singer, and going along with his appearances on Davis’ podcast, he’s also an incredibly kind and humble guy, who always has dinner on the table for her when she comes out of a hard day’s rehearsal. It’s not… Love Island, I say. Davis laughs. “He’s amazingly talented. He’s the kindest soul in every room he walks into. Kindness and talent, that’s the dream combination.”

They had just bought a house together in London, where Davies hung in the downstairs bathroom a handwritten letter from Dolly Parton, who wrote the show 9 to 5 and co-produced. Davies told me that Barton always remembered everyone’s names and the conversations they had. “She’s a very smart woman, very funny. Everyone thinks they know her, but I say she’s one of the most special women in the world.” This is perhaps the kind of privacy that rising stars cannot enjoy today, where thanks to social media, “everyone knows everything about everything.”

Davies seems confident but nervous. “I’m terrible, and it’s getting worse as I get older,” she says. “My nerves were terrible while using Strictly, this was next level, like numb hands.” She returns the fear to singing at the Eisteddfod in Wales. “I was about 11 or 12 and I messed up on national television. I stopped completely.” Nerves or not, there’s no stopping her now. “People say to me, ‘Oh, what do you want to do after musical theater? I’m like, ‘I literally want to do this for the rest of my life,'” Davis says with a smile. “I want to do eight shows a week for the rest of my life, and I’ll be happy.”