INTERVIEW
Wear your heart on your sleeve, own your mistakes – and don’t be a snob about fashion
‘I’M VERY NORMAL and try my best to stay that way.’ Usually, when a celebrity insists that they’re ordinary, I would advise you to treat it in much the same way you would a man who makes a point of what a nice guy he is – with a hefty dose of scepticism. Unless that is, said celebrity happens to be Rita Ora.
Ora doesn’t know how not to keep it real. Frankness is one of her superpowers. But if she is ‘very normal’, the York Notes of her bio are anything but. The most ever Top 10 singles for a British female artist. More than 10 billion streams. Over 16 million Instagram followers. One Oscar-winning husband. Film parts and primetime TV gigs (The Voice, The X Factor, The Masked Singer). Red carpets and front rows and… well, you get it.
Still, she’s a straight shooter, a sharer. ‘I don’t know how to answer things without it coming from my heart,’ she tells me when we sit down to talk in a west London studio on a washout February afternoon. ‘But that’s why I enjoy communicating with people, because they also feel comfortable talking to me. I like to be a very honest, trusting, open person.’
Down-to-earth and up for a chat, the 33-year-old comes from a remarkably unguarded place. She makes for easy, open and warm company. I’m not surprised Ora’s friends say that, when they go out, she could talk to a wall. ‘I just like knowing people’s stories and understanding people,’ she says. ‘I don’t care who it is or where they’re from.’
Her love of a natter sparked Ora’s successful Primark collaboration – the third collection is out this month. She was out in LA one night when her friend pointed out some people from Primark HQ across the bar. She absolutely had to go over and talk to them ‘as a fan’, Ora says – she wanted to tell them what the brand meant to her growing up. ‘It ended up becoming this real emotional night. It’s an unspoken language, I guess, Primark. You can always rely on it. It’s that trusting friend.’
When she first partnered with the retailer, she could tell people were cynical about the move. But if you want Ora to do something – tell her she shouldn’t. ‘It really winds me up when people try to limit you,’ she says of stay-in-your-lane naysayers.
Besides, she’s never been one for following the script – this is the woman who wore a prosthetic spine with, yes, a Primark dress to last December’s Fashion Awards – instead she, and her
