Emma Willis: From delivering babies in hospitals to delivering singles to the altar
Love. Is there a more tantalising and terrifying four-letter word? It’s the force that drives our fleshy animal selves as we go about our business on this peculiar spinning rock; the source of profound joy and searing pain; and, in our modern context, perhaps more elusive than ever before. Dating apps are roundly regarded as being in their flop era and young (heterosexual) women are declaring themselves so done with the subpar options of eligible men that they’re trying celibacy on for size.
‘I think had I been dating now, I would really struggle with it,’ says the woman sitting opposite me. That her facial features are so eerily perfect they could be the work of a well-fed generative AI makes the unenlightened part of me want to say please. ‘
I have friends who have been married from [dating apps], but I also have friends that have been on them for years. And they’re just so sick of it,’ she – the TV presenter Emma Willis – tells me. ‘The world we live in is so based on what we see... on a screen. You can create any persona. But this –’ she points to her brain and her heart, ‘is a huge chunk of who you want to be with.’
If Emma has love on the brain, it’s with good reason. Recent hosting duties include the UK edition of Love Is Blind. You know, Netflix’s megawatt US dating show where would-be lovers are denied so much as a cursory once-over of their potential matches. ‘When I heard about [the concept], I was like, “This is ludicrous,” and then I watched it and I was like, “Oh wow, it actually can work.”’ The premise, she explains, is essentially the reverse of a dating app-engineered set-up, where you’re bombarded with images and little else. ‘You actually get to talk to someone and feel someone’s energy and the vibe… and hopefully – after you’ve spent so much time consistently dating them day and night – you meet them and you’re just as happy with what you see as what you’ve got to know.’
Love, locked down
Emma’s been out of the game for ‘a while’. It’ll be two decades this winter since she got together with her husband – and Love Is Blind co-host – Matt Willis; he of pop-punk band Busted fame, with whom she shares three children aged eight to 15. Would she, to borrow the show’s catchphrase, have fallen for him ‘sight unseen’? ‘I’ve been asked this question a lot recently and my answer was a very quick, firm “yes, I would have”, and he had to think about it, which was a worry!’ She cocks her head to the side and widens her elfin eyes. ‘Matt is the most charismatic and funny and loving and gorgeous human on the inside, and his personality just radiates out of him. So he would have definitely been at the top of my list… and then I saw him and he was well fit.’
When I enquire further about the mechanics of their dynamic, Emma doesn’t disappoint. ‘He is a bit of a dick in the best possible way, but so am I. So we kind of worked really well together – like not a bad dick. Like, silly.’ The silliness translates on-screen, too: when she taps her husband on the bum; when he tells the cast he knows he’s ‘punching’. She rolls her eyes when I bring it up. ‘He says that a lot. It’s so weird. I’m like, have you seen yourself in the mirror?’
It wasn’t all flirtation on set. ‘He made me feel really bad at my job because he learned his scripts verbatim,’ Emmarolls her eyes playfully, explaining it’s something Matt does for acting gigs – not something she needs for presenting. ‘He was like, “Yeah, I know my lines” and I was like, “Er, can you give me five minutes?!”’ Off-screen, Emma paints a relaxed picture of their parenting, casting herself as the ‘bad cop’ of the two. Although, this dynamic has started to shift. ‘He’s now a man with a teenage daughter and, you know, he’s kind of turning into very protective dad mode.’
It’s showtime
TV is fickle. And yet, Emma has consistently bagged top presenting jobs – from Big Brother to The Voice – for almost two decades now. But perhaps the best indicator of her range is W and UKTV’s Emma Willis: Delivering Babies, where she – the daughter of NHS workers, who had initially aspired to follow in their footsteps before her teenage modelling career kicked off – works in a maternity unit. ‘We’re going to Watford General Hospital [in the new series], and I’m doing my full maternity support worker qualification… My goal at the end of it is to run the pre-op clinic,’ she shares. ‘It’s the hardest thing I do, without a shadow of a doubt, in every way – physically, emotionally, mentally. It takes everything. And it’s real, you know, and that’s what I love about it. It’s my reality check every year in this crazy old world of TV that I stumbled into.’
Moving hospitals presented a challenge. ‘You have to get over all those fears, again, of judgment and impostor syndrome and all of that shit,’ Emma says. As in, people not taking you seriously because you’re off the telly? ‘Absolutely, yeah. And thinking: what the hell do you think you’re doing? Playing at being here and working?’ She can’t recall how many births she’s been part of, but midwifery has made its mark on her (‘the resilience of women is something you see every single day there’). So have the midwives. ‘They work their asses off and everything they do is to help support and give the best possible experience to the family… I do genuinely think it takes a very special and specific type of person because not everyone could do that job.’
I mention the fear with which some of my millennial peers view childbirth. Does Emma think the stories we tell – especially on social media – play into this? ‘We can’t just tell the bad stories, and we can’t just tell the good stories,’ she says, sharing her own experience. ‘I was scared to give birth when I was in my thirties. I’d always heard the scary stories as well… It is scary, especially when it’s your first time, you haven’t got a f***ing clue what to expect.’ The advice gleaned from her maternity ward work, as well as her own births? ‘Learn as much as you can beforehand. Because if you go in only knowing positive stories and something doesn’t go to plan, then you’re gonna get freaked out…be adaptable, that’s my biggest tip. It’s great to have a plan – but be willing to move the goalposts.’
Staying on track
Speaking of goalposts, I’m curious to hear about Emma’s – particularly when I learn she squeezed in a blast on the rower the morning of our cover shoot. ‘I didn’t really show up for myself for a long time; just kind of did everything else apart from what I really needed… The list was long and I was at the bottom of it, if there was time. But I’ve changed that a lot actually,’ she says. ‘Probably from when I turned about 45, I could feel myself changing and getting older and being more tired. I think as well when you see your parents getting older… That was really a switch in my mentality – when my body suddenly felt ‘mid-forties’ and tired, [I began] changing things like sleep and giving myself time to do something. Even if that’s something I don’t want to do; I don’t want to go to the gym, but I dowant to be strong.’
Emma is a brand ambassador for Absolute Collagen, so great skin is an evergreen (and, clearly, realised) goal. Next up, cardio fitness. ‘I don’t like being out of breath, so my cardio is s**t,’ she deadpans. ‘I’ve been quite enjoying going sugar-free… I did it at the beginning of the year for about eight weeks and I noticed a massive difference in everything. My sleep patterns were better; I was less bloated all over, less puffy.’ She points to the gold-coloured band on her finger. ‘I wear an Oura ring, I track my sleep, I’m trying to be fitter.’ While every influencer worth their £140 Vuori leggings sports the super-subtle tracker, Emma was influenced by a tastemaker closer to home. ‘[Matt’s] had one for years, then he bought me one,’ she says. ‘He’s so obsessive with health and fitness… He’s been doing cold water therapy and looking at his sleep for years.’
Pulling through
As is often the case for wellness evangelists, Matt’s enthusiasm for optimising his health is partly born of the time spent doing precisely the opposite. Last year, BBC One aired Matt Willis: Fighting Addiction – a raw documentary that resonated not simply for the titular star’s own candour, but also for how it showed the impact that his struggles had on his wife, from the height of his addiction in the mid-2000s to a relapse eight years ago. A tearful Emma talks about the diary she kept of Matt’s drink and drug use; of her fears that he’d die.
Why was it important she tell that story? ‘It was meant to be Matt telling [it],’ she clarifies. ‘I was really pleased he was doing it and then, along the way, they asked me to talk about it… It was f***ing terrifying to make it because we always try to be as private as we can be in a public industry, and that was really putting ourselves out there. Even the night before it aired, we were like, “What is going to happen tomorrow?”’ So they left the noise behind. ‘We literally went away to Thailand and hid… We went for Matt’s [40th] birthday, but I timed it so we could have some time together away and wait for potential doom.’
Disaster never arrived. ‘It was phenomenal – the response and the stories that people shared. It honestly blew us away. I get really emotional every time I talk about it... I couldn’t believe that people were sharing on such a public platform like Instagram what had happened to them.’ When I first read those comments, the outpourings didn’t surprise me. Letting others voice their pain is powerful; not least when you consider the chokehold of shame and stigma that society places on those who can’t moderate their use of addictive substances and activities. ‘It’s something that will be there forever, you know, and it’s how you kind of navigate it day to day… because life can get better.’
Emma is teary; she cries often, she says, laughing now. It’s not been easy, clearly. But the way she describes their love? Damn. ‘He’s home in every kind of sense of the word. Wherever he is that’s where I want to be because he’s just f***ing brilliant and he’s my best mate, which I think can sometimes get lost in relationships… I am still in love with him, I still fancy him, he still makes me laugh and he still winds me up. It’s not just going through the motions,’ she says. ‘I know it sounds really f***ing cheesy, but I honestly love him every day more… and we hate being away from each other more and more. It’s really strange. It’s just a feeling I feel really f***ing lucky to have because we’ve been together for a long time and it’s still not boring.’
On reflection
I get the sense Emma is a natural analyser; those room-reading chops fuelling her professional success. Does she think she’s the self-reflective type? ‘Oh my god, yes. I self- analyse and overanalyse all day, every day. I love psychology. I think that’s why I loved Big Brother so much – because it’s watching human interaction.’ Of course, self-reflection has a shadow side. ‘I internalise and think about anything and everything all the time. Probably too much. Someone said to me the other day, “You need to start breathing more; to switch off your brain a little bit more.” Again, Matt’s been doing it for years – going to breathe and meditate… [and] now I get it.’
‘I’d like to be more relaxed, I think. I’d like to overthink less,’ Emma offers, when I ask where she’d like to find herself a decade from now. ‘I would like my kids to be grown and happy. Whatever makes them happy. I’d like to be travelling and going on a gap year with Matt. I never did that; I’ve just worked since school… I didn’t even know what a gap year was!’ She laughs, before clarifying her vision: ‘To be even more in love with Matt than I am today, if he hasn’t done a runner by then, and sailing around the world on a boat.’ A fitting chapter in a love story for the ages.
Love Is Blind UK is now available on Netflix
CREDITS: Make-up: Amanda Bowen using Iconic London & Tatcha. Hair: Sophie Sugarman. Prop Stylist: Jaina Minton. Shot at Spring Studios
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