The music video for ‘Gracie’ sees Naomi Scott dance through the streets of Ilford, her home town in East London. In the promo, Scott is unstoppable, in flow, spirit soaring: no-one dare intervene. We’re united in seeing someone enjoying themselves, aren’t we? And protective of that.

“I'm falling into these other versions of myself,” Scott begins pulling on the thread of 11 tracks that make up her debut album, F.I.G, which stands for Fall Into Grace. “Grace is my second name. Our second name often feels like it's us, but it's us-adjacent. The extension of that is Gracie, and Gracie represents someone who isn't a people pleaser and just doesn't give a fuck and is disagreeable. I love that word. I want to be more disagreeable.” 

Days before our introduction, I was listening to F.I.G and remark that I want to play it on CD in my decades-old Mercedes, a car that has ruched leather lining the doors – which the world is not like anymore. If you want that, you need to sought it out. It’s because her songs feel of an era: you think you remember them being performed on Top of the Pops, even though that is impossible. Maybe it’s because they sound like hits. A vapour trail of feel-good energy lingers as each departs, only to be replaced by the next one. The album isn’t a retro record, yet it’s sophisticated in its muscle-memory of 80s, 90s and early 00s atmospheres.

It takes a lifetime to make your first album and here is someone assured in what they want to say and how they want to say it.

“I thought, ‘Okay, I've got these demos. They're very raw. I'm layering my vocals,” she says. “Which adds to a sound palette that a producer can understand what I'm going for. It was about finding the right producer to help me create the soundscape I wanted, because I could hear it in my head. And that was Lido [Norwegian producer Peder Losnegård, who has worked with Jordan Ward, Ariana Grande and Aminé]. I wanted it to feel accomplished and clean to an extent – but still have some texture.”

Beneath the mood, there’s a concept, which comes from a motif by Sylvia Plath: a fig tree where each fruit symbolises a different life choice and the paralysis of picking the wrong one. Scott encountered it watching the TV show Master of None, where Aziz Ansari’s character reads an excerpt from The Bell Jar at the end of first season. Tantalisingly she also cites Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in The World, starring Renate Reinsve, as an impetus. The Danish-Norwegian auteur and recent Oscar-winner is one of contemporary cinema’s most urbane and affecting filmmakers.

“I recut this album three times because I wanted it to be perfect,” Scott reveals. “I have so many stacked vocals, [laughs] so many times I'm nearly fainting because I'm doing so much breathy, breathy stacks, and the thing about breathy stacks is that it's 80% breath, 20% sound that's coming out. So you get really lightheaded. I created a rod for my own back. If Janet Jackson can do it, then that's my inspiration. She's the North Star, isn't she?”

Scott was discovered singing in church aged 14 by Kéllé Bryan of 90’s girl group Eternal – they were on Top of The Pops as England’s confrère to En Vogue. Never having received any formal training, Scott had a gift. Soulful voices come through singing gospel on Sundays.

While still in her teens, she had a meeting and writing session with pop factory Xenomania that never resulted in a record, despite their endless Girls Aloud and Sugababes hits. Collaborations with various producers on two EPs, 2014’s Invisible Division and 2016’s Promises, were tentative as her acting career took off: she was Kimberley Hart, the Pink Power Ranger from Power Rangers (2017), and starred with Kristen Stewart in Charlie’s Angels (2019). She has written songs for her roles – in 2019’s live-action version of Aladdin, co-written and directed by Guy Ritchie, she played Jasmine, and in 2024 horror Smile 2 she played pop star Skye Riley, winning a handful of awards for her standout performance.

The writing and production of F.I.G began in Los Angeles, with Scott's collaborators Gabe Acheson (Goldwash) as a producer-writer, and Daphne Gale, a singer-songwriter from New York.

“From there, Lido was like, ‘You know, I have a whole setup in Norway? I bought an old primary school and my parents live in the flat above and we've built a studio in the bottom.’ It's where he grew up and his mum is still the head teacher at the local school. He's right near a fjord, so you can jump into the cold fjord every day and feel invigorated. It was so incredible.

“The whole time I wasn't signed. It was very much a case of ‘we believe in this’. I didn't have any cash injection or someone A&R-ing me, this was just myself. I wouldn't have it any other way because the more you get used to other people deciding how your creative process is being put together, when it doesn't work, you don't know what to do because you haven't honed that muscle of knowing your own taste.”

As a born Londoner, it’s intriguing to know the places in the capital that mean the most to her – what her secret history is with the city.

“It's more rituals,” she offers. “All around food. My father-in-law on a Sunday will usually make us curried goat.”

Scott is married to former footballer Jordan Spence, and they’ve been together since a young age.

“His mum does the best mac and cheese, which is incredible. Or my mum will cook a curry when I've been travelling and come back. If I've been away for a long time even an M&S sign makes me feel good,” she says.

The shared connection of Ilford bonded Scott with Blood Orange, who she was a fan of before they met. (Dev Hynes wrote the post-melody on single ‘Cut Me Loose’).

Like everyone else, she finds Rosalía captivating: “The space that she lives in... the taste and the way she presents everything. It feels like the perfect nuanced balance.” And acknowledges the sounds of her dad’s Windows Media Player (Michael Jackson, Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush), as well as the blog-era alt-pop heroes of her teens (Jessie Ware, Robyn).

“I am trying to carve out something quite intentionally that I feel blessed I can do,” says Scott. “I want to be the best artist I can.”

Read this again in five years. 

NAOMI SCOTT
TEXT DEAN MAYO DAVIES
PHOTOGRAPHY KAYLA CONNORS
FASHION HAMISH WIRGMAN
RE-EDITION #25, SPRING/SUMMER 2026
COVER STORY