Nicole refused to audition for talent show

(Image credit: Ken McKay/Thames TV)

Nicole Scherzinger has revealed she refused to audition for a TV talent show when she was starting out.

The former Pussycat Doll - who is now a judge on The X Factor - told Notion magazine how her mother tried to persuade her to audition for Popstars, but she didn't feel she would be what they were looking for.

Nicole said: "I was so theatre at the time I was like, 'I am not going to be a Spice Girl'. That is just not me.

"I mean I'm a Spice Girls fan now, but at the time I only wore black and I was Goth. I would have been Goth Spice. Ethnic Chanting Spice, that's who I thought I was."

Nicole, 34, embraces her Goth look in a black and white photoshoot for the magazine, posing in leather with scraped back hair, heavy dark make-up and a studded ring.

Meanwhile, the singer also admitted she turned down the offer of recording We Found Love, which went on to be a worldwide number one for Rihanna and Calvin Harris.

She said: "I passed on We Found Love. I got the demo of that song and I was busy at the time.

"They'd sent me a few dance tracks and I wasn't able to get to them and I was like, 'Oh, there's so much dance and I want to take a break from it.' That was my fault. I slept on it."

 

Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 


An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.