‘My mum told me to give up acting at 16, and said, “It’s done for you.” She was absolutely right,’ remembers Alexandra Burke ahead of taking the plunge into her first television drama. At the time Burke felt her dreams had been ‘ripped’ by her mother, Melissa Bell, a lead singer in group Soul II Soul, one of the driving forces of British R&B in the 90s.
Bell died in 2017 , aged 53, almost a decade after watching her daughter win The X Factor, release a record-breaking debut single, and later become a West End sensation. But none of that would have been possible had Burke ignored her mum’s stern advice. ‘She told me “You’re going to be a singer, and the rest will follow once you’ve had some success.
”’ Turns out mums really do know best. On October 10, Burke will be starring in Curfew, a new six-part drama on Paramount Plus bound to ruffle feathers, following a divided United Kingdom (not much of a stretch there!) where men are forced to live under a 7pm curfew or face a minim two-year prison sentence. ‘It caused quite a debate in my household,’ she says.
‘Personally, I don’t think curfew would work in our world. You cannot paint every man with the same brush. I’ve got a lot of male friends, I’ve got brothers, and I would hate for them to be locked up from 7pm till 7am because of something they just didn’t do.
‘But then, at the same time, saying this as a woman, what can be done to make women feel safer on the streets? We’ve heard a.