EXCLUSIVE: Alexandra Burke, who won The X Factor in 2008, is set to play soul legend Chaka Khan in a new West End musical but the singer admits she’s been “taking the role home” to her fiancé and their two children
By most people’s standards, Alexandra Burke has already done the hard part. She won The X Factor in 2008 with a cover of Hallelujah that sold more than a million copies, has a string of No1s under her belt, was a Strictly Come Dancing finalist in 2017 – topping the judges’ leaderboard with a flurry of perfect scores – and has led some of the West End’s biggest musicals including The Bodyguard and Chicago .
But Alexandra is not most people and, for her, the biggest challenge is yet to come. “I’m anxious because I want to do it justice,” the singer, 37, tells us. “It’s the most intense role I’ve ever done in my life.”
She’s talking about I’m Every Woman: The Chaka Khan Musical , in which she will play the 73-year-old soul legend for 10 weeks at the Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre from next month. She is less nervous about the singing than about how deeply the show delves into Chaka’s life – from civil rights activism to a toxic music industry and years of addiction.
“We have to go there [emotionally] as actors,” Alexandra says. “People are going to be really shocked and surprised at what she went through, and the fact that she’s still standing. But it’s an honour to play her. I want people to hear her story. To touch, move and inspire somebody else, I think that’s what her story will do.”
Alexandra, who was hand-picked by Chaka for the part, is determined not to let the role consume her. When she gave brief runs of the show in Hackney, Coventry and Eastbourne earlier this year, she admits she was “sadly taking the role home” to her fiancé, Irish former footballer Darren Randolph, 39, and their two children, aged four and two.
Darren had to intervene. “He was like, ‘Alex, you need to leave Chaka Khan at the door when you leave that theatre.’”
The problem, she believes, is that she knows no other way. “I’m not a trained actress. I go with the vibe and I do what I’m told,” she says. “I’ve got a good gut instinct, directors have told me, but I carry that character the whole way through.”
She agreed with Darren that she needed to separate work and her home life – and has devised a plan. “I’m going to have a specific perfume for when I play Chaka. Directly after the show, I’ll shower that off and put my own one on, so I smell of me walking out the theatre door.” She will ask Chaka herself what she wears, to keep it authentic.
There is one scent she won’t touch for the part. A bottle of her late mother’s Chanel No.5 goes everywhere with her, but she’s keeping it away from her latest alter-ego. “I’ll let my mum’s perfume go for this,” she says. “I need something that doesn’t connect with the role or me.” Her mum, soul singer Melissa Bell, died aged 53 nine years ago this summer.
We are speaking to Alexandra at the Fragrance Foundation UK Awards at Grosvenor House in London’s Mayfair, where she has come to perform. The Foundation partners with and champions various charities including The Alzheimer’s Society, which struck a chord with Alexandra.
“I have a family member who has a condition that will sadly lead to that illness,” she says. “So it means so much to me to know how much this Foundation supports others and how much they give back.”
For all the West End billing, there is no sign of the diva about her. Her biggest fans these days are at home: her two children, whose identities Alexandra keeps private. “My kids think I’m Chaka Khan,” she laughs. “I’ve got two amazing babies that are now obsessed with Chaka and Michael Jackson.”
The Chaka Khan musical is produced by Adrian Grant, the man behind the long-running West End hit Thriller Live , about Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5.
“They walk around every day, going, ‘Mummy, are you gonna go and be Chaka Khan?’ They’re obsessed! Every day I’m playing [Chaka’s] I Feel For You video. They know the lyrics to Ain’t Nobody and I Feel For You , and they now know Michael Jackson’s Thriller . They’re in love with those three tunes. I’m getting them into old-school music.”
Switching off from mum-mode while at work is a struggle. “I’m not good at that. My kids are my life,” Alexandra says. She is up at five or six most mornings, trains hard to stay fit and won’t socialise after a show – it’s straight into the car and home.
The children sometimes go to work with her. When the show toured earlier this year, they sat in on rehearsals, minded by the production company’s manager Emily, who told Alexandra she would look after them herself if that was what it took to get her on stage. There is a nanny, too – Sylvia – and Darren is a hands-on dad. “I never feel that I’m not there, which is nice,” Alexandra says. “I’m always on the phone to them, and they get it: Mummy’s working to provide.”
Her strong work ethic is inherited. “My mum was always away and I have memories of seeing her on TV working hard, providing for us, putting food on the table, clothes on our backs,” she adds. “I want my kids to understand hard work. They’re always going to see Mama work for as long as I can. I think it’s really important.”
That same drive is also, she admits, why one happy bit of life keeps slipping down the to-do list. She and Darren, who she started dating in 2021 after meeting through mutual friends, got engaged in 2024 – but they are yet to set a wedding date.
“I’m too busy to plan a wedding at the moment, but we’re getting there,” she says. There’s no rush, partly because she wanted to feel fully herself again after her second pregnancy. “It’s taken me nearly three years to feel great after giving birth to my second baby. I didn’t want to rush that process, simply because I wanted to enjoy breastfeeding, I wanted to enjoy my babies, I wanted to enjoy Darren – us as a little family.”
A third child is on the cards, but she knows her mum would have insisted she tie the knot first. She says, “I can hear in my ear, ‘Make sure you’re married before that third baby!’”
But for the Fragrance Foundation UK Awards, there are songs to be sung, including Hallelujah and I Wanna Dance With Somebody . And a glass of red wine after her performance – a rare night off before the school run the next morning. “Tonight,” she says, “It’s Mum’s night out.”
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