“I can’t put out a record that doesn’t have truth on it,” Suki Waterhouse says.
The 34-year-old British model, actor, and musician is at home in Los Angeles, just three weeks shy of announcing her third album, Loveland, out this summer. “And I definitely can’t put out something that’s just like, ‘Oh, every day of my life is just this magical, fantastical dream.’”
As we talk over Zoom, Waterhouse seems relaxed, her blonde, boho bangs effortlessly tousled across her brow. She’s wearing a striped, long-sleeve shirt reminiscent of the Tumblr-era fashion girl many people first came to know in the 2010s. In the years since, she’s quietly multihyphenated her way through the entertainment world, picking up loyal fans as a model for Burberry, a face of Michael Kors, and the star of projects like Daisy Jones & the Six (in which she ironically played a rock star).
For someone who has been in the spotlight since she was a teenager, Waterhouse’s candor is almost surprising. In her music, there are no false illusions of a glamorous Hollywood fairytale—but she isn’t afraid to celebrate the remarkable life she’s created for herself, either. “I finished my last record [2024’s Memoir of a Sparklemuffin] right as I had my daughter, and this one has been everything since then,” she says. (Waterhouse’s daughter, whom she shares with her partner, actor Robert Pattinson, is now two years old.) “The process has been somewhat different because I think at the beginning of writing it, I was quite fragile.”
By the time she finished, though, she had a new sense of herself—something she explores in the first single off the record, “Back in Love.” In the song, she sings about her lust for life, manifest in joyful diversions like playing jazz on the radio and taking the long way home. “When I started singing the lyrics to that song to myself,” Waterhouse recalls, “I suddenly had this sense that my identity had come back together.”
When she recorded the new album, she was in New York, where she braved one of the harshest winters the city had seen in years. “I did find it really fun, though,” she says of being caught in not one but two historic nor’easters. “All the power shut down in the apartment, and we had to move out. It was fun to be actually in the elements.”
That attitude perfectly aligns with the mix of romance and stark reality at the heart of Loveland. “I’m talking about dreams coming true for my partner and me, and also having a baby in the middle of that,” she says. “There are some moments on the record where I went into the studio and it was very much just writing down exactly what I felt, word for word, and dealing with those feelings of, everything is so great and we’re both having dreams come true, but that takes us really far away from each other. We have a new baby. We’re not always at home together for long periods. We’re moving every few months. There are those moments on the record as well as these very joyful moments.”
Indeed, a lot has changed for Waterhouse over the last five years. Of course, she’s had a child, but music has taken a front seat in her life, too. In 2022, she released her first full-length album, I Can’t Let Go, before touring for three years, opening for Taylor Swift, releasing another record, and doing the festival circuit.
With Loveland, she was looking to expand. She worked with her longtime collaborators Natalie Findlay and Jules Apollinaire of TTRRUUCES again, but this time around, she also tested the waters with new partners. Ever the romantic, she likens this process to dating and seeing if you fall in love—which she ultimately did with The National’s Aaron Dessner at his famous The Long Pond Studio in upstate New York.
Waterhouse was “going through quite a tough time” in the middle of her last tour when she drove up to work with Dessner, but there, she and her collaborators wrote “Seasons,” an atmospheric pop song that blends her soft-rock vocals with Dessner’s signature melodic-pop sound. “I think [‘Seasons’] opened us up to a new sonic palette,” Waterhouse says.
The group also worked together on the song “Almost,” which carries a similar spirit. “I think we were in the summer there, and I walked into the studio, and I was like, ‘What if I want to have something that you can sway to, but it’s not full dance?’” she says. “And I was playing him ‘In Da Club’ by 50 Cent.” Dessner made it happen with a subtle drum line.
Of the whirlwind that is being on tour, Waterhouse says that “when it’s approaching, I yearn for it, and I also am terrified every time.” On stage, she’s earnest, often wearing big Penny Lane-style coats with chunky boots and bralettes, harkening to a ’70s California aesthetic with a 2000s indie twist. “It’s about so much more than just your performance,” she reflects. “It’s also where all the people who love it come, make friends, and find something in common. And that’s such a beautiful part of it to me, seeing how these communities grow through music.”
That community comes from all different sides of her life: some are fans of her fashion career, others of her movies, and others know her solely as a musician (“They think I’m, like, 26,” she jokes). But with this new project, she’s ready to show them yet another side of her. “Making a record is a discovery to me and myself,” Waterhouse says. “So there are things that surprise me, too.”
