In Conversation
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Aimie Atkinson
Words By: Lilly Gentner
“Sorry I’m in a Starbucks!”
Aimie Atkinson laughs as we start the call. She is on her way to an editorial shoot for one of her music videos – iconic. Aimie is casually sipping on a hazelnut iced latte, which immediately makes me regret all my life choices of not also sipping on a caffeinated iced beverage myself.
Aimie Atkinson is a singer, songwriter and actress who is especially known for her role as Katherine Howard in the musical SIX.
The singer grew up around music, with her dad being a member of a rock band. “So the singing thing sort of came from him. I just remember he used to sit me on his lap, and he’d have the guitar and try and teach me harmonies”, she tells me. Laughing, she shares how, for a long time she couldn’t work out how to harmonize. “So I think my love for music comes from him, really”.
Aimie lights up when she is talking about her family. She giggles and says: “My dad sends me a song every single day, like he must have had 1000s and 1000s of songs. I swear he just sits at home in his studio and writes constantly. Every day I get something different. Sometimes it’s really psychedelic and then sometimes it’s more rocky”. Aimie shares how much the connection she has with her family means to her. Sending her tracks to her dad and in return receiving notes on what she should do or add. “It’s nice to have that sort of collaboration with your dad”, she says.
Images Courtesy of @aimieatkinson
“Your new album ‘Queen’ is coming out in June! What does it mean to you and how would you describe the vibe?”, I ask Aimie curiously. “The album means a lot”, she tells me excitedly. It took Aimie a couple of years to finish ‘Queen’ because the theatre took up most of her time. “This isn’t a discredit for theatre. I love theatre. It’s one of my biggest passions in life. But when you’re doing eight shows a week, you don’t really have much more energy to do anything else creatively. I just wanted to put 100% of myself into the production that I was in”. Leaving the last show she was in, ‘Pretty Woman’, gave her the time to start writing again. “And it just ignited this thing that I’d kind of lost along the way”. Aimie describes the new album as dark pop with her own take on theatre. It is about her journey of trying to understand human beings and why sometimes they do terrible things. “I do inherently believe that people are good, but then sometimes they do awful things, and you think, why? So it’s got that sort of darkness to it”.
The song she’s most excited for you to hear: Better to say goodbye. It’s about the feeling of seeing your ex across the bar and realizing it was the best thing to say goodbye to them. “I mean every breakup when you look back you go, oh, it was the right decision. It’s just very difficult when you’re in it to see the wood for the trees”, she says.
Aimie describes music as healing to her. It helps her to get over a situation by writing about it. “There’s nothing better than crying along to a sad song. We need to go through the stage where we’re crying along onto someone belting out a power ballad”, she laughs. Growing up around rock music and heavy metal, rock bands from the 80s that had a theatricality to them, have been a big inspiration for Aimie’s own music. “I just think it was a real moment in time”, she says.
Her love for theatre came from, believe it or not, seeing a performance of ‘Phantom of the Opera’ when she was about 11 years old. “I just remember being completely blown away when the chandelier flies through the audience. And I just thought, that’s what I want to do”.
Thinking back to all the different roles Aimie has played throughout her career, Katherine Howard in SIX is the one she connects with the most. “I think from the outside she’s kind of witty and funny and sassy but actually on the inside she’s super vulnerable and hurt. I think that’s maybe how I can be seen sometimes”, she shares. Aimie admits that inside she is incredibly vulnerable but doesn’t always show that on the outside. “I’m a performer. I’m an actor. So it can seem that I’ve got all my shit together, but I don’t”.
I ask her if she still gets nervous before shows. “Super nervous”, is her response. Apparently the older you get the more nervous you get too, is what she says. “It’s always the five minutes before I go on that I’m nervous and as soon as I’m on stage it’s fine”, she says. For Aimie preparation is key and if she could she’d rehearse 24/7.
Before going on stage Aimie likes to distract herself from what’s about to happen. “You probably shouldn’t do this, but I’ll facetime my partner, so I’m distracted. Maybe I should try the meditation thing, that might really help me”, she giggles.
Aimie has been part of the SIX crew for “seven years or something”. She grew up with the show and so have many fans. “Sometimes when I meet fans, they’ll say that they became historians or tutor history because of the show. Performing is such a strange thing. We always say, oh, we’re not saving lives, obviously we’re not. But in a way, theatre is kind of healing. People will come and see the show and then change the whole course of their life”.
Meeting fans often goes hand in hand with receiving gifts like t shirts with her face on. Aimie laughs and says, even though she doesn’t want to wear a shirt with her face on, her partner John walks around with them all the time: “John loves the t shirts more than anything. He’s my biggest fan”.
SIX the musical is being shown in cinemas across the UK right now. This is why you should watch it according to Aimie:
““If you hear, Henry the eight’s wives are coming back together to form a girl group, and they’re doing this one-night concert, you might think, I don’t know about that. But I have to say, you will leave the cinema feeling super elated and inspired and empowered. That’s how I felt during the show. I do think this is a film for everybody. I hope it makes you feel like you can conquer the world, because that’s how it felt for us when we were performing it”
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Aimie has seen the movie three times already, but she says she wants to see it again in theatres: “I’m going to try and sneak into a cinema to see it. I want to see it when it’s not a room full of all the cast and crew, just to kind of see how people respond to it”.
So, when you go to see SIX the musical, watch out for Aimie disguised in glasses, a beard, a big hat and wig, hiding behind a newspaper.
Aimie Atkinson’s brand-new album, Queen, produced by Steve Anderson & Terry Ronald, due to be released on CD and digital platforms on 20 June 2025 and you can pre-order here!
Massive thanks to Rozzie Inge @ingeniumpr and make sure to head over to Aimie Atkinson’s IG for more on SIX, her brand new abum QUEEN, and much more @aimieatkinson ❤️🔥❤️🔥
Interview & Words By: Lilly Gentner