From Steps to the stage, Faye Tozer joined the Loose Women today, straight from rehearsals for her latest role in the musical 42nd Street.
The pop star and actress – who revealed she only has two weeks to learn her script and choreography for her upcoming stage show – spoke to Charlene White, Coleen Nolan, Brenda Edwards and Jane Moore in the studio and exclusively discussed how her perimenopause symptoms almost stopped her getting back on stage.
She explained: “This was really interesting, I have had symptoms for a good sort of three years but they all sort of became very very, apparent last December and I had the fear of going back to work because of all of these things.
“Brain fog… imagine going on stage and you just stop, you can’t remember your lines. Physical things that happen to you as well and you know, getting into costumes and things like that, and the anxiety I had… What was really interesting was, I was getting butterflies and I couldn’t really realise why. Physical shaking, like I would in an audition, that sort of real quivering. I was thinking, am I going to get back on stage again? Is this going to stop me?”
Crediting presenter Davina McCall for helping her work through it, she said: “So many people threw me, they said go and read Davina McCall’s ‘Menopausing’ [book]. Which has been my absolute bible… it gives you so much knowledge and power to figure out what you can do to battle it.”
Discussing her own experience, Faye opened up: “When I realised that something was actually wrong… I’m usually a very outward going person, happy to leave the house for any reason… and I got physically nervous and I literally had to stop Micheal and Benjamin… we were going round to Nana’s for Sunday lunch… and I was like, I don’t know what to do with myself and just didn’t feel myself and I had to sit down and take a few moments to myself.”
She continued to explain the impact her symptoms had: “Joint pain, I was training and my elbows were hurting. My elbows were hurting and my knees were hurting. Yes, we get pain from working out but this was different to what I’ve had before.”
Emotionally, Faye also discussed losing her Mum to lung cancer a year ago: “It’s a real void without Mum. Also, I think my mum was my biggest critic and my biggest fan and she was the reason that I do shows or I’m in the business and just not having her on the end of the phone… it’s a tough one.”
Faye also revealed to the panel that her now husband wasn’t a fan of Steps when they met, as she joked: “He’s a bit younger than me… So when we met, he did know of Steps [but] he wasn’t a Steps fan and still would admit to that. He’s very proud of what we do and comes to every gig when he can but when we met, I had big dark hair and I had full panto makeup on!”
Loose Women, weekdays at 12.30pm on ITV and STV.
