Beverley 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.
