Love Island star Amber Davies became emotional as she admitted her “heart has been broken” in more ways than she could have imagined
Amber Davies broke down in tears as she addressed her personal “heartbreak”. The ex-Love Island star, 29, is currently starring in the leading role of Elle Woods in a new production of Legally Blonde: The Musical, but had to take some time off last month as she fought off a chest infection.
While she was away, TikTok star Hannah Lowther took over the part but rumours of a “feud” between the two began to emerge, which both actresses quickly quashed, although comparisons of how each of them portrayed Reese Witherspoon’s signature of a sorority-girl-turned-lawyer role continued to dominate social media.
But after making her grand return to the show last week, Amber, who reached the final of Strictly Come Dancing just before Christmas, admitted that while she did sign up to be “in the spotlight” with her TV career, she never expected to receive the amount of online hate she has done over her stage work.
She began: “I know that going on Love Island put me in the spotlight. I didn’t know how much it was going to and I feel so grateful that 10 years on, I was on Strictly, and there’s so many amazing things that have happened to me. I definitely am used to it but I do have to prepare myself.”
Amber, who has also starred in Pretty Woman: The Musical, Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5, and The Great Gatsby couldn’t stop the tears as she struggled to talk about the struggles she has been through with her social media presence.
Speaking on her Call To Stage podcast, she added: “The last thing I do want to speak out about – this has broke my heart in ways that I can’t even possibly imagine. When I was doing Strictly I’d had a meeting with my team and they prepared me for the trolling and the opinions.
“Sometimes the opinions aren’t trolling but the opinions are mean, so it counts as trolling. I think sometimes when people leave mean comments, they forget that they are talking about an actual human being who is just working hard.
“What I wasn’t prepared for was the trolling that was going to come with Elle. I have worked…I am trying to find the words to explain this…I’ve been in this industry, I’ve done lots of jobs and I’ve never experienced trolling within the musical theatre industry as much as I have during this time.
“I want to be really clear that I know how disappointing it can be when your favourite musical theatre performer doesn’t book the role that you want them to book but it’s super important that people don’t go and attack the person who is playing the role. Everybody has worked so hard to get where they are in their career.”
Amber – who has interviewed the likes of High School Musical actor Corbin Bleu as well as fellow theatre performers like Wicked star Rachel Tucker, and West End legend Ruthie Henshall, also known for her appearances on I’m A Celebrity and Coronation Street, on her podcast – decided to release a special solo edition where she addressed her own personal ordeal, and spoke candidly of how her dream role of Elle was thwarted by several anxiety early on in the run thanks to the “real malice” that came her way.
She added: “Elle Woods has always been a dream of mine and now I’m achieving it and it feels like the most wonderful thing in the world but it has been hard. For me, I wasn’t a massive TikTok person. TikTok person is engagement rings, dog videos and baby videos, I’ve been introduced to the world of TheatreTok and if you’re on the wrong side of that it can be really, really difficult.
“I feel like I didn’t expect to be playing Elle and living my best life with this heaviness behind me of real malice and nasty comments, personal comments, DMs being sent to me. So this is definitely something I have to cope with the year.
“That’s worse case situation but it is what it is and there’s nothing I can do. When it started happening, my anxiety was really bad, I was going on stage and felt like I had an elephant sitting on my chest. I was so scared to open any type of social media app.
“A lot of people were celebrating me but a lot of people weren’t. These are my coping mechanisms now, and it’s so sad that I’ve had to do this, but on TikTok, you can put in key filter words so you don’t see it on your algorithm.
“I’ve put in Elle Woods, Legally Blonde, Amber Davies, all of these things are in my filter of things I don’t want to see. I’ll post on my page and then I get off it – I don’t comment or do anything. “
