The grit & growth of Mollie King
From grappling with grief to taking on a gruelling endurance challenge, the broadcaster Mollie King has had an arduous 18 months. But she’s building back towards a different version of herself. Here, the 36-year-old shares what we can all learn from her Gen Zlisteners, what loss has taught her about love and why, respectfully, she wouldn’t go anywhere near social media for advice on raising her daughter…
What were you up to in 2017? If you need a memory-jog, Theresa May was running the country, TikTok was a Kesha song and the most toxic political issue dividing Sunday lunch tables was whether you wanted in or out of a European trading bloc. For Mollie King, it was the year she turned 30, navigated her career post-pop stardom (Mollie was one fifth of The Saturdays, if your pop history knowledge is rusty) and fronted Women’s Health – telling our interviewer she’d watched enough Sex And The City to be utterly unbothered about her newly single status.
Six and a half years on, just as your scenes have shifted, so too have Mollie’s. She’s closed the lid on her singing career to speak to hundreds of thousands on Radio 1, being promoted to the weekday afternoon slot – along with her co-host Matt Edmondson – in the station’s recent reshuffle. She found her ideal match in 6ft 6in, kind-eyed, CBE’d cricket captain Stuart Broad (their respective career backgrounds drawing comparisons to the Beckhams) and became amum to Annabella, now 18 months old. Alongside jovial clips from her radio shows, and the odd red carpet, Mollie’s Instagram showcases snaps of south-west London parks, plush holidays and wide, gleaming smiles that reach the eyes of two smitten parents. It’s a congruous evolution for the Wandsworth-born, Surrey-schooled former pop star.
Amid the joy-giving, life-affirming moments that accompany our ascent on life’s staircase, the hard things stack up, too, the truth of which Mollie doesn’t need reminding. When we speak – she’s all trussed up before her photo shoot in a warehouse that gives new meaning to the phrase ‘urban jungle’ – it’s exactly one month after Mollie took on one of the hardest experiences of her 36 years. Encased in a neon waterproof jacket and a helmet, and weaving through some of England’s very grey, very soggy roads, she cycled 500km from London to Hull in memory of her late father (the east Yorkshire city was his birthplace). Losing a parent is enough to shake the foundations of any individual’s world. But the circumstances around Mollie’s loss – his death came 10 days after Annabella was born, following a shock brain tumour diagnosis midway through her pregnancy – are the sort that land in your gut with a thud and trigger a wince.
