The Big Questions: Fearne Cotton on Happy Place, teenage fame and why she needs to thank Dawn French

Welcome to Metro.co.uk‘s , where we ask, well, the big questions (and the smaller ones too) and this week, we’re diving deep with Fearne Cotton.

As a summer of travel approaches, Ellie Goulding and Fearne surprised 80 starry-eyed fans (geddit?) at a secret Hilton concert in on Wednesday, but before the jig was up we chatted to the presenter and podcaster who, while she was shtum on the surprise singer, dished on all else.

From her wildly successful and powerful podcast, Happy Place – where she’s interviewed everyone from Jada Pinkett Smith to Bimini Bon Boulash – to rising through the ranks as a presenter alongside the likes of and Stephen Mulhern, Fearne, 40, has been a powerhouse in the entertainment biz since for decades.

That’s not to say there haven’t been the challenges, and, much like her no-holds-barred podcast conversations, she was an open book when chatting with us about what makes her tick (cold swimming in the sea) and what gives her the ick (ice baths). 

Yes, we get that specific.

Ok, so, we’re speaking before the Secret Socials gig, and while we can’t talk about *who* is performing, what is it about the thrill of live music and this particular event that’s got you excited?

A musician of that calibre, and with such a big fan base, performing to such an intimate crowd is always so amazing. And I love the notion of it being secret, because I don’t think we get many surprises as adults.

I haven’t really seen that much live music in the last couple of years, I’m still kind of buzzing off getting to see performers do their thing live.

As a huge music fan, I think just seeing someone that talented at what they do in the flesh is almost inexplicable, because, if you’re at the top of your game, music-wise, you’ve got something pretty special going on. Yes, you can hear that on the radio, or if you’re streaming it, but to actually see that happening and to feel that force, that energy, is what keeps me going back to seeing people that I love play live. Not every live gig is brilliant, but when someone is amazing, it’s really something else. 

That connection between you and the other audience members who share a love of that artist or band all being together, whether it’s all singing together, or just dancing, or feeling elevated because of it, that, again, is special, and not something that we get to tap into every day. 

You’ve been open in the past about stepping away from jobs in order to look after yourself. I assume your arm didn’t have to be twisted too far to get involved with this…

You’re totally right. I’ve been very honest on Instagram talking about certain jobs that I don’t… it’s not even like I’m choosing not to do them, I wouldn’t be able to. Because I think as I’ve gotten older and, just experience life, I guess I’m not walking around wearing a suit of armour anymore. 

There are certain situations that I just don’t feel I can’t put myself in. I don’t want to walk around with a wall up or feel like I’ve got to protect myself. I do think you have to do that to an extent in this weird industry, this weird career that I’m in. 

So in saying yes to something like this, I don’t need a suit of armour. I’m friends with the person performing, which is an added bonus, I’m very fond of them, and my favorite thing, obviously, within my own little world, is interviewing people. It’s what I get a huge kick out of, just having really decent, in-depth conversations with people and with a live performance at the end. So for me, it ticks all the boxes. 

And I slept perfectly well last night, which is a sign of no danger here! It’s all comfy and safe and exciting. I feel very lucky that I’m very excited by what I do. I haven’t got bored of it, after all these years, I still get a real kick out of just chatting to people about life and what makes them tick. I find other people fascinating. 

Speaking about wearing this body armour throughout your career, if you were rising through the ranks as a teenager on TV today, do you think it’d be a completely different outlook for the conversation around mental health?

The level of commentary didn’t exist when I was a kid. When I started on telly at 15, there was no awareness of what other people thought about you, or your performance, or whatever you were doing. It was unknown. I would do a job, go home and think, ‘Oh, my God, I’m so lucky that I get to do that’. I was just a random kid from a working-class suburb who ended up on the telly, I couldn’t believe my luck. 

I felt that for years and years, and I think doing it today would feel very different, because everybody’s exposed to an element of critique or commentary. You’ve got to be made of pretty strong stuff to deal with that well, and to cope with it without having some sort of self-destruction, or without it impacting you. 

I’m quite a sensitive person, by nature, so I’m not necessarily built for the job. Luckily, now, I’ve built my own sort of little world with Happy Place. I feel safer in that, because I’m working more intuitively, and I’m talking about things that I really believe in and that I care deeply about, and my incentives are different. 

Before, it was, ‘how can I be the biggest TV presenter out there?’ because otherwise, what’s the point of doing it? And that’s obviously not my goal. My goal is, ‘how can we open up this conversation further? How can we get more people involved? How can we make more people feel less alone and more together in all of this?’ It feels safer, but also sort of endless in the sense that we can just keep doing that, we can always have a new goal to talk about new subjects or to reach more people. 

As a teenager today being on the telly or starting out or being big on social media, oh my God, I don’t think I would have dealt with that very well. I think I would have gone ‘Nope, don’t want to do this, not for me’. So I feel so lucky that I got to start my career in an era [where] you just did your job and you went home. And that was it.

You rose through the ranks alongside the likes of Stephen Mulhern, Holly Willoughby et al. Looking back, was it helpful to have someone like Holly, who was the same age as you, going through the exact same things, so you didn’t have to sit in silence if s**t was going down?

Yeah, but you know what, it was lovely growing up with all of those brilliantly talented people; Jake Humphrey is also a great friend of mine. There was a real nice gang of us. But I don’t think any of us felt that those times were particularly problematic. I don’t think we ever needed to sit down and go, ‘How are you coping with it?’ because we were just having fun. 

It was a really free, lovely time of just having a right laugh and all feeling collectively grateful that we were doing this job that we love.

Back then, the really important thing for me was my schoolmates, who are still my mates today. There are six of us who grew up together, and I think having such a weird job I needed that real familiarity and normalcy and that came from my schoolmates and it’s still the same today. I don’t sit around with them going ‘Guess who I just interviewed?’ No, we’re talking about funny stories from when we were drinking in the park at 14. So I think that was really important back then if anything.

It’s been four years of Happy Place. Where do you even begin to describe how successful it’s been?

It’s grown, luckily, very organically. And the first series, I was literally texting people that I knew or kind of knew, just saying, ‘will you come on the podcast?’, and I remember texting Dawn French, and she went, ‘What’s a podcast?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, s**t. I’m just gonna chat to you.’ And she was like, ‘only if you come to Cornwall’. 

I have to thank Dawn really for a lot, because she really took a chance on letting me try out this… I was experimenting on those first few episodes, I didn’t know what I was doing. 

That then gave way for other people to go, ‘oh, wow, if Dawn went on it and was talking about divorce, and adoption, and all sorts of, you know, very complex issues, maybe it’s alright to do that’. So Dawn really helped in terms of that. 

Now we’re so lucky that I think people know it’s a trusted space, and that I’m not there to screw them over or to get something out of them they don’t want to say. I’m just sat there listening, I’ll ask a few questions here and there to prompt thoughts and memories, but it’s really not anything to do with me. We’ve luckily cultivated this really lovely, safe place where people can chat and often you get the sense that they really want to get it off their chest, it’s not because they have to go on or because they’re plugging a book or whatever.

When Ashley Caine came on, who I’m just totally in awe of, it felt like he needed to let these words out and to not hold all of the pain in anymore and to connect with other parents who had been through bereavement of that level. 

I feel very honoured when I get to sit and listen to someone talk like that in such a raw and beautiful open way, because it’s not often the case.

Before [I was] interviewing people about the song they’ve written or album they’re promoting and it’s more about entertaining people who are listening. But this feels a bit different. This feels like it’s the person beneath that layer of what they’re doing work-wise. It’ll always feel like a privilege, and that’s why I’m desperate to keep it going.  

What have you learned about yourself throughout doing Happy Place?

I’ve come away with something every episode. 

Sometimes it will be a straight-up epiphany of, ‘oh, that’s why I do that thing’. Or sometimes it’s, ‘oh, I could try that, that might help me’. But really, I think an all-encompassing answer would be, it’s taught me to listen properly. 

So often, before the podcast, it was more, as I said, about entertaining, but also, ‘I’ve only got five minutes here, I better make this pretty quick and do the right questions and the funny questions or whatever’. And the answer was almost irrelevant. It was just something to get through, so I can get to my next bit. 

Now my bit is irrelevant, and it’s the listening that’s most important, so I’m really getting a sense of the person, if I don’t know them, but also how far we can get into this. That’s only from listening. Going ‘right, well, maybe I could ask another question on this that feels even more personal or even more exposing…’ not exposing in a sort of salacious way, but even more revealing, I guess. 

You’ve spoken about different perceptions of you – do you think there’s a misconception about you now? And more importantly, do you care anymore?

It’s not something that plays on my mind, no. It’s almost an unanswerable question because there’ll be people that listen to the podcast that will have a pretty good understanding of a bit of who I am. There are other bits of me at home that no one will ever see, or they don’t really need to see. But they’ll have a pretty good understanding of my sets of values, or my interests, my moral compass, etc. 

There might be people that have never listened to the podcast, haven’t read any of my books, that used to watch me on Celebrity Juice or kids TV, that will have a very different idea of me. And that’s the only, it’s not even frustrating, but the only stumbling block, I guess, is that when you do a job like I do, you do get kind of stuck in someone’s memory of how they’ve perceived you; how they’ve seen you. 

All humans are changing all the time. If anyone reading this looks back at when they were 18, I’d hope that you’d cringe. I certainly do. But that’s part of growing up, that you go, ‘Oh, bloody hell’. I was like that, these were my opinions, and you change – but weirdly, in my career, people think you’re this fixed thing, that you’ve got to be how you were in the past, or how they’ve perceived you. 

Sometimes I might come across in my podcast now as, I don’t know, more thoughtful or quieter or less entertaining. I don’t know. I’ve always been like that, there just wasn’t room for me to show that side of myself previously in my career, so I don’t mind as much there are some people that might have preferred me doing Celebrity Juice or Radio 1, that’s absolutely fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. 

All I’m really interested in now is the people that are engaged with the work I’m doing with delivering good quality stuff every week and something that’s going to make them feel better on a Monday when the podcast goes live. 

I’m much less bothered about that today. And you can’t really be bothered, because even how I am now today, in 10 years I’ll be different all over again. So that perception will be wrong or slightly off centre. So it’s always changing, and it really doesn’t matter.

And finally, after listening to you speak about this with Joe Wicks, how are your cold showers going?

[Laughs] I’ve really upped my game recently, I’ve been going to the sea. I love the sea, my son is obsessed with the seaside, so we go literally any opportunity we get, we’re in that car, we’re going to the seaside. Rex will go rock pooling for hours. It’s just absolute bliss.  

And then one of my mates has got an ice bath, like a sort of ice pit, in their garden that I went in the other day. That was not fun. With the sea, at least, it’s moving and you sort of move with that undulation, it’s quite a lovely feeling. When you’re just sat in ice, you’re like, ‘this is f**king awful’.

But it was good to give it a go. I’ve been bang into that stuff for a while now – there’s definitely something in it.

Hilton is hosting a series of exclusive events across several of its iconic properties as part of ‘Secret Socials with Hilton’, throughout 2022 and beyond.