FKA twigs is currently starring in the new genre-bending psychological horror film The Carpenter’s Son, opposite Nicolas Cage and Noah Jupe. She is a multifaceted talent who is a singer-songwriter, professional dancer, actress and model. She embodies the culture of the last decade – a fusion of music, cinema, art and fashion – and her unique, self-made creations have earned her countless awards and nominations. She recently starred alongside Bill Skarsgård in Rupert Sanders’ The Crow, a 2024 adaptation of the classic tale. She also received the Music Producers Guild’s prestigious award for outstanding contribution to U.K. music, graced the cover of British Vogue, and made her solo debut as a dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company, performing “Satyric Festival Song” at the company’s 98th Season Gala in New York. Her third studio album, Eusexua, was released in January of this year to widespread praise.
Three Great Things is Talkhouse’s series in which artists tell us about three things they absolutely love. To mark the release of the new supernatural thriller The Carpenter’s Son, starring Nicolas Cage, FKA twigs and Noah Jupe (as Joseph, Mary and Jesus), the genre-defying pop star turned actress shared some of her favorite things in life. — N.D.
Stretching
I love stretching so much. For me, nothing beats it. Sometimes if I’m at home and I think, “I just really want something yummy to treat myself,” if I actually stretch, that’s what I want. Stretching actually beats everything, so I have lots of different contraptions at home, like bands and balls that I do Pilates exercises with to get all my joints really warmed up. I love putting a strap on my leg and hoisting it over my head. It’s the best feeling in the world. It kind of makes me feel high. I get “stretch drunk” – I’ll stretch and then just flop out for 20 minutes, barely able to string a sentence together. It makes me feel kind of giddy – I get a real release from it. Sometimes if I’m in a really deep stretch in my hips, I’ll just really meditate on a problem I’m going through in my life, and an answer will just suddenly come to me.
I love working out how everything in my body is linked. I get really bad neck problems, but if I stretch my legs, sometimes my neck stops hurting. Sometimes if I have a tummy ache, I’ll roll out my feet with a ball and then it goes away. Or if I stretch my hamstrings, my lower back stops hurting. I love hacking my own body. It’s a real sense of control over my body and a real sense of trust within my body as well.
The other reason I love stretching is because if you do a little bit every day, you really see incremental improvements in things. Because I’m a dancer, it’s really exciting to find that I have more range. I just have to do 20 or 30 minutes a day and the difference it has on my life is huge.
I remember when I was about 10 years old, my dance teacher gave me a pep talk about greatness and told me I needed work both of my legs, so I could do the splits equally well with both. I really try to trick my body, so now I don’t even say I have a good leg and a bad leg; I say my left is my “less preferred” side. And I’ll always do that first, so I have more energy to put into it. Sometimes I try to smile when I stretch. And when I’m dancing, if I’m in a low plié and it feels really uncomfortable, I always say to myself, “Nice. Nice. Yeah, nice.” I do that when I’m stretching as well, because I feel like I’m tricking my body into making it feel like it’s safe, so I can go deeper. I feel like I’m giving away secrets here!
Pure Products
I love any product that’s really pure, so it can be food, beauty products or clothing. I really love things that are non-toxic, especially if they’re made by smaller companies or local companies. I love finding out where products are from and I get so excited about ingredients lists and the order that things are in. Like if I’m looking at almond butter, but almonds are the fourth or fifth ingredient, I think to myself, “No, that’s not almond butter.”
I love my body feeling really clean and knowing that I’m doing something that’s better for the environment. My hairstylist and I talk about eating by pretending that we’re a caveman or from the olden days, like just eating a carrot and some raspberries. My hairstylist was saying the other day that he went on this diet that was just chicken, kiwis and blueberries, and when he came into the studio, he looked amazing. Just the idea of everything I put in or on my body being very pure, it feels like I’m really honoring myself and honoring the earth and learning what things do to my body.
I love herbs and teas, and what they can do for my body. For example, at my house I don’t have tea in tea bags; I make them myself, depending on what I want. So, if I feel clogged in my body and full of toxins, I would probably have a dandelion leaf or a nettle tea, which cleans the blood. If I want to feel really calm, then I go towards a lemon balm, chamomile or lavender tea. If I want my skin to glow, I’d probably go towards a green tea, a rose tea or a fruity tea. If there’s something hormonal going on, I’d probably go towards a raspberry leaf. I love looking at nature’s ingredients and being able to be my own doctor in my house. I make my own blends, unusual ones as well, like nettle and lavender. If one of my friends has a rash, I’ll say, “Well, you’ve got to try rosemary oil,” and make a little concoction.
In my late 20s, I found out I had fibroids, which is an issue a lot of women deal with, but mainly women of color. They’re (usually non-cancerous) tumors that grow in the uterus and they’re so painful. I’d been in pain every single day for maybe five years, and it was completely debilitating. It was at the beginning of my career and I was very hormonal. I had very bad skin, my face was puffy and I just felt in the worst mood every single day. When I was 29, I had an operation to have them removed, and I was really grateful to have a check-in with my body at such a young age. It made me take my body very seriously and start to notice things, like if I ate a lot of hormone-filled dairy or chicken, my body hurt. But if I ate lots of green vegetables, it made my tummy feel good, I was in a better mood and I could do more. Now, I feel like my clarity, even as an artist, is greater, because I can use my brain and I can survive on less sleep.
My Dogs
Whenever I have any animal in my life, I’m so deeply obsessed. I have a dog sleeping on my lap right now, and it’s the best thing in the whole world.
Dogs are just the most beautiful, precious thing, and so many things about dogs break my heart, like the fact that they can be in pain and can’t tell us. I love how loyal they are. I love the way they smell, even when they’re a bit stinky. I love the fact dogs that have taught me about unconditional love. Dogs accept you as you are, whether you’ve had a shower or not, whether you’re in a good mood or not, whether you’ve been a good person all day or not, whether something amazing has happened or whether something terrible has happened – they’re exactly the same with you all of the time. It’s the greatest gift from the universe that we could be given, because to have that pure connection with animals is very spiritual. Dogs have been bred to love us, but when I look into any animal’s eyes and I feel like they know me or I know them, it just feels like the purest part of me is connecting with the purest part of them.
I love having dogs in my house. I love the way they sound. I love their paws. I love hearing them sniff and scratch at my bedroom door in the morning. My dogs are quite naughty, actually. They are Brussels Griffons, which is notoriously a very stubborn breed, so it doesn’t really matter what I do or what type of training they get, they just do their own thing and bark constantly at everything. But each dog barks at different things. With Bam Bam, if you move, he’ll bark. If you’re having fun, he’ll bark. If you’re not having fun, he’ll bark. If he thinks something is outside, he’ll bark. If he doesn’t hear anything outside but he suspects something could be outside, he’ll bark. He’s insane, and he’s been like that since he was a puppy. But he is the biggest snuggler. He will cuddle you like a boyfriend – he wants to be literally jammed against your body. He needs full-on eye-to-eye contact and if you don’t look him in the eye, he’ll paw you like he just needs to be on you. It’s adorable.
My other dog is called Chicken Girl, and she’s just on her own mission. I don’t think she necessarily knows who I am or who she is. It’s yet to be discovered whether she knows that she’s alive. She’s just in her own space 24/7. She gets what she wants. She’s also got really bad pretty privilege, which doesn’t help. But I just love dogs, I love animals.
