“There was no other option, I've always had that drive in me, I've always had that belief, I came out of that womb with jazz hands…” Diana Vickers is sat in a large Russian hat backstage at the Kiln Theatre - with Kilburn particularly pinched by the Baltic weather - but she’s not talking Russian, she’s talking in a Lancashire accent that seems to exude its own kind of warmth, or at least is delivered with such rapidity the air molecules are vibrated sufficiently to heat the room.
“…I wasn't gonna let anyone stop me. And I haven’t changed, no. I feel like I've always had a fire in me. It can be to my own detriment sometimes, like nothing's enough. My friend even said to me, you can't even relax when things are going right. I'm always like, everything's really good, but what's next?”
As an X Factor contestant in 2008 she hit fame early, at pace, and while finding herself somewhat in the midst of lad mag culture, she considers what it was like to have everyone in the country knowing who you are and says, “I was 16, I was obviously loving it.”
Right now, the fire is stoked once again, as she seems to be doing all things at once. Firmly established on the stage – she gained huge plaudits for I Wish You Well: The Gwyneth Paltrow Ski-Trial Musical last year – she’s now in Coven at the Kiln, while podcasting alongside Jack Guinness in tell-all podcast Just Between Us, making comedy as part of the duo Ki & Dee (with Chiara Hunter), and also now coming back with a new single. It’s called Pretty Boys, features a video in which she appears as “Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct,” and - in a way you soon realise is very Vickers - is winningly unfiltered.
“It was written about a guy that I dated who was really, really toxic,” she winces, “I really I do have a type. I'm like, ‘Oh my God, he's amazing! …No wait a minute, he's a narcissist.’
And then I got over him by dating a very gorgeous, beautiful blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy. So I wrote the song about that. Everything in it really happened. Of course it didn’t work out with the boy either because dating in 2025 is an absolute nightmare.”
Outside of dating though, things are going swimmingly. The single is what a young person would call ‘a banger’, and Coven – directed by Miranda Cromwell - is proving to be a hit for the Kiln. It’s a musical about the Pendle witch trials in 1600s, based around the true story of Jennet Device, a nine year old girl who accused her whole family of witchcraft.
“She was manipulated into it at a time when the patriarchy was accusing women of being witches and having them killed,” says Vickers, “It's all set in a prison with these accused women and I'm playing a lot of the male parts like Covell the guard, who was a real man. He went on to be the mayor of Lancashire. He's a real nasty bastard.”
Vickers also plays Edmund Robinson, a young boy who again was also real character that was persuaded to go in court to testify, “We have his testimony, and he stood there in court and basically said that Jennet turned him into a horse.” In the play, such absurdity is handled humorously, with Vickers delivering his damning speech as a rap song to hilarious effect. And yet, you understand the chilling point here: that the trials and inevitable execution of ‘witches’ were treated as public spectacles.
“Back then it was entertainment, wasn't it?” she says, “These kids were basically told to do this and then their statements were taken as gospel. Basically this woman's now going to die because of this story that I've been encouraged to make up, and it's actually horrendous.”
While Vickers has a ball playing these awful men, she is highly attuned to the general sweep of the show, and has a personal affinity to the story, saying, “I grew up near Pendle and it was a big part of my childhood. I would go up Pendle Hill with my dad and my sister and he would tell us all the stories. If I actually did my ancestry tree, I'm sure that I would be connected to these little witches.”
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Vickers says she cries backstage when Lauryn Redding as Rose sings about being sexually abused (“I genuinely get these moments where I actually can't believe that this happened and start like feeling like I'm suffocating”), and the night the Standard was in the audience, the atmosphere crackled with emotion. Witches are having a moment in pop culture but Vickers sees deeper resonances too, as the show explores abuse, abortion, and misogynistic power structures.
“I feel like people are allowing women to have a voice now, which is really special because I feel like even though these things happened hundreds of years ago, things haven’t really changed that much really, which is quite scary. We heard one woman in the audience saying after, ‘It's changed me forever.’ We get standing ovations every night and a lot of tears. There's so many incredible empowering messages in there.”
She calls herself the ‘light relief’ in the context of the play, and says she had fun figuring out how to stand and sit like a man – “Covell is this weak man trying to rule over these women on a power trip… I based him on a lot of my Northern exes” – but in fact the range she displays is impressive, and includes some puppetry – “that’s a new one for the CV” – and besides, the comedy is crucial to the production.
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Indeed, her “comedy chops” are very much at the heart of this new phase of her career. The lyrics of Pretty Boys have lines like, “You’re a narcissist, so full of shit/My therapist got rich off this misogynist,” and a tone that feels, with Lily Allen’s album around, very much of the moment, as she gleefully brags about swapping the toxic twat for the blue-eyed boy: ‘Everything he does, he does it better than you.’
She says, career-wise, “I don’t really have a plan,” but actually that looseness of approach is where creative lives are heading in the social media landscape.
“Everyone asks me, ‘What do you love more? You do theatre, a bit of telly, your music, your podcasting…’ but I'm a real hard worker and when I'm not ridiculously busy, I panic.” She says a few years back she was a little lost, that old fire in the belly had dissipated somewhat. She says she was aware of her potential, but was not quite getting there with her writing and roles. Again though, it was those comedy chops that showed her a way out: “It really was unlocked by Ki & Dee, my comedy bits online, songs about my dating life. People were like, you've got funny bones. With the Gwyneth Paltrow musical that was again like a big like SNL skit for about an hour and it was really silly and manic. People realised I was quite funny.”
She clearly has built up some new momentum, yet brilliantly for this “pub girlie”, she’s trying to live in the moment and enjoy herself.
“I’ve got myself into this position now where I feel super grateful and really lucky. Even with the songs I’m just having fun with it. With Pretty Boys, it's like, ‘ OK, I'm just gonna snog a really hot guy in the video and be like fuck you to my narcissist ex.’ I’m not taking myself too seriously.”
That said, being in Coven is one she’s proud of and considers what she wants people to get from the play:
“I want people to come and see it and just feel empowered - and hopefully they enjoy me as a man...”
She stops herself to reign in the funny bones.
“No…. I hope that we give these women and so many women around the world a voice. And that people hear that voice. That's quite good. Go with that.”
Diana Vickers’ new single “Pretty Boys” is out now. Coven runs at Kiln Theatre until 17 Jan.
