Essex singer Pixie Lott left 'completely broken' by West End stint after suffering terrifying panic attacks

Essex singer Pixie Lott has revealed her West End debut left her feeling a complete mess, struggling to function and suffering panic attacks. The pop favourite, 33, who grew up in Brentwood and became a household name at 18 thanks to 2009 debut Turn It Up, starred as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s in 2016.

But after almost a year of eight performances a week, she says the experience of portraying her character’s descent into chaos nearly broke her. Pixie has now poured the painful emotions she went through into a track on her fourth studio album, Encino – confessing that writing and recording the song was like a therapy session, The Mirror reports.

She said: “I had a really hard time after Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I was crying my eyes out every night. It wasn’t good for my brain. It felt like it changed the makeup of my brain.

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“So by the time it ended I was a completely broken person – just a complete mess. I didn’t know what was going on, I couldn’t even function. It was the weirdest thing. Everything was scary, everything was confusing, I had no grounding. My breathing was tight every day.

“Like panic attacks, which was really scary. And I was navigating life thinking, ‘This is the new normal now’ – not knowing what this was and just trying to put one foot in front of the other. I don’t know exactly how long I was at the crux of that, feeling really bad. But I know it took a couple of years to get myself back again.”

Pixie, born Victoria Louise Lott in Bromley, South London, said she only began to improve when she discovered meditation after searching online for a way to escape how she was feeling.

And it was only then that she fully opened up to her partner of 14 years, Oliver Cheshire, and her friends and family. She went on: “I definitely spoke to them about it but not in depth. I don’t think I properly spoke about it until after it. So at the time, they wouldn’t have known. Back then, I felt like I didn’t know what it was. Looking back now, it was really bad. But meditation really turned things around, that was the answer.

“I found it when I was Googling out to get myself out of this. And obviously it’s not a ‘one session and you’re done’ thing. But if you do a small amount every day you will notice it and it makes everything better. That was a massive transformational period in my life. It’s all on the album because the point of the album is authenticity.

“There’s a song on there called Say So, which was probably the hardest to write because it was about that time. But I couldn’t experience these things and not write about them, and it felt really good to get it all out.”

Pixie has also used her new music to channel her experiences of bullying and trolling on single Somebody’s Daughter, which was released yesterday. She said: “Somebody’s Daughter came from a conversation about negativity.

“Over the years, I’ve met some characters that have been very mean, and I’ve seen some nasty stuff written about me online – stuff that I wouldn’t even want to repeat. I have learned not to read it, but sometimes you can’t help it and are like, ‘What am I doing?’.

“People would comment on my appearance, or say that I think I’m so good. Recently, someone commented, ‘Oh, you used to be fit’. That’s the silly stuff. But I have had bad stuff over the years. And I wanted this song to be a reminder that we’re all human, and we are all trying our best. I think that can get forgotten.”

Pixie began writing her album – her first since a self-titled set in 2014 – five years ago. Since then, she has married fashion model Oliver, 36, in Ely Cathedral in Cambridgeshire in 2022 and welcomed their son Albert, nine months.

She is now managing to juggle motherhood and work with the help of her parents, Beverley and Stephen, who have gone on the road with her. And she admitted she is very much in favour of having more children in future.

Pixie went on: “Timing is such a strange thing. This album, the wedding, a house, having Bertie – I’ve wanted all of these things for ages and I’ve had to be so patient. But for some reason, everything has happened at the same time. And thankfully, it’s all been worth the wait in the end.

“Our wedding was the second best day of my life, and having Bertie was the best. I was really lucky to have a lovely long time off after he was born. But now we’re into release mode, and I’m excited to share this experience with him. Luckily, I can bring him with me, because my mum and dad can help me out. I wouldn’t be able to do it if they weren’t able to help me, so I am lucky.”

She added: “I did always want a big family, because our family is so close and Olly is a really family person as well. I want to have all the babies and he loves being a dad. He’s a great dad – he absolutely loves it. I do feel like since I’ve had Bertie I have wanted to work harder too, because when you have kids you want to give them the best you can.

“I do think sometimes that it shouldn’t have taken me so long to make an album like this. But life can be weird and crazy and maybe I needed to learn those lessons to be in the right place. Now I’m on a roll, and I definitely don’t want it to be another 10 years before my next album.”