Beverley Knight ‘Prince encouraged me to be bold’

over 2 years in The guardian

The singer and musical star on her role as suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst in a hip-hop stage show, her contempt for the home secretary and her ambition to play Aretha FranklinBeverley Knight came into the limelight as a 1990s soul singer and has also made her name as a musical theatre supremo. She turns 50 in March and claims never to have had it so good: she is starring in Sylvia, a radical new musical mixing hip-hop, R&B and funk by Kate Prince at the Old Vic in London. Knight plays the redoubtable suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst (the mother of Sylvia).How do you see Emmeline Pankhurst?I did lots of research – I’m a history buff, a bit of a nerd. I read lots of nonfiction. I saw that Emmeline was a complex woman – as most heroes are. Here was a woman who, at great cost to herself, her liberty, her family relationships and her mental health – fought with everything she had to push through votes for women. Continue reading...

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