Baby number three and the big 4-0 – it’s all change for The Voice presenter Emma
EMMA Willis really couldn’t have timed her pregnancy better. Her much-wanted third baby – husband Matt, always more mindful of the sleepless nights, took a little longer to come round to the idea of taking the plunge again – is due in early May. This comes slap bang in the middle of the handy two-month gap she has between The Voice and Big Brother.
And call her an optimist, but as things stand, Emma isn’t planning on taking any official maternity leave.
This, plus the small matter of her 40th birthday (although she could pass for a decade younger), all adds up to a very eventful 2016.
“I am over the moon to be pregnant, and so excited to be given the chance to do it all over again,” she says in her first interview since the happy news broke.
“I reckon the baby will come after The Voice ends and before Big Brother starts, so that should be OK. Matt will be on tour [with Busted], so it’s going to be busy. My parents are hopefully going to move in to help.”
So she’ll be fronting the live Voice finals in March and April while heavily pregnant and, all being well, should be back hosting Big Brother every Friday night from the end of June. Er, sorted.
Meanwhile, Isabelle, six, and four-year-old Ace are thrilled at the prospect of a new baby brother or sister.
“The kids are beyond excited,” says Emma, 39, who doesn’t have a nanny and juggles childcare between family when the children aren’t in school or nursery.
There have been plenty of good times, but also some seriously tough ones during Matt and Emma’s 11 years together – seven of them married – but their relationship is stronger than ever.
“It’s still passionate and I still fancy him. Yeah, totally, without a doubt, I still fancy him. He’s getting better as he gets older!” she says.
“He’s at the gym every day, so he’s pretty buff now. He’s also stopped dyeing his hair funny colours and finally come to the conclusion that he looks best with a brown skinhead, and I’m definitely happy with that!
“He’s just my favourite person. He makes me laugh, he makes me angry, he’s a big kid, an absolute geek and a knob at times – but in the funniest way – and I just love him.”
Do they ever row?
“Well, I row and he listens! Do you know what? We actually don’t. We bicker and we get p**sed off, but never over anything serious. Stuff like: ‘You’ve left that f**king wet towel on my side of the bed!’ or ‘Matt have you paid for that school trip?’ ‘Er, no.’ ‘Argh!’ We’re like that, but we don’t row.”
Having children didn’t change their relationship, she says, apart from having to “get a bit more sensible and stop being so selfish.”
But it did change Matt.
“Matt grew up a lot when Isabelle came along. She was the thing that changed him and sorted him out. So I’ve got a lot to thank her for.
“When you have kids together, it cements everything and you’re like: ‘Ah, so this is what it’s all about.’”
Apparently, Isabelle knows exactly how to play Matt, 32, in order to get her own way. Like mother, like daughter, jokes Emma.
“Isabelle has got Matt wrapped around her little finger, and I can see what she’s doing because I did exactly the same thing when I met him! So I know what she’s like and she can’t fool me.”
Both Emma and Matt have always been extremely protective of Isabelle and Ace – they never take them along to events or allow them to be photographed. There certainly won’t be a glossy at-home magazine shoot to herald the arrival of baby number three.
“We want them to grow up like we did,” she says. “We’ve moved to the [Hertfordshire] countryside out of the city, and it was all because of them.”
Emma is always a delight to be around. She’s sweary, funny and utterly normal, and her modelling background means she’s quick in front of the camera. She deserves every bit of the success she’s had over the last few years.
Last year was undoubtedly her busiest to date. She took the difficult decision to step down from Big Brother spin-off Bit On The Side – a show she loved doing – but admits that “something had to give.”
“I’ve not stopped,” she says. “It’s whizzed by and it’s been brilliant – a whirlwind. Definitely the best year of my career, from the point of view of how much work I’ve done. Asking me to think about it I’m like: ‘S**t!’
“We’ve also moved house and not just extended, but ripped out the house and rebuilt it. So it’s been busy.”
And with The Voice, which returns next weekend, three series of Big Brother (one regular version and two celebrity), her Sunday-morning show on Heart Radio and The Miracle – a groundbreaking new ITV medical series, filmed over two years telling the human stories behind life-changing advances in medicine – 2016 won’t be quieter.
Aside from the hectic schedule, there are, of course, Emma’s 40th birthday celebrations in March.
“I’ve never really minded getting older,” she says. “I feel like people take me a bit more seriously, so it’s just an age. My older sister had a meltdown when she turned 40, but you can’t changeit – there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s just a number and, anyway, in my body I feel like I’m still 18.”
What are her plans for the big day?
“What are Matt’s plans for it, more like! He’s asked me what I wanted to do and I said I really didn’t mind, but I’d like to do something.
“So he replied: ‘Leave it with me’, which is not something he ever says, and he wouldn’t say it unless he had a really good idea.”
Whatever he has up his sleeve can’t be too far-flung or extravagant, as Emma’s birthday falls the day before The Voice’s live shows kick off.
Filming the audition stages sounds like it’s been huge fun. According to Emma, the genius new additions to the panel, Boy George and Paloma Faith, proved an instant hit.
“Boy George is someone who I always wanted to go on Celebrity Big Brother, so when I heard he was doingThe Voice, I was like: ‘Wow!’
“It was such a shame that we lost Tom [Jones], because he’s such a lovely man and a legend. But to add two people like George and Paloma is brilliant.They’re both bonkers. Ricky [Wilson] and Will.i.am, of all people, can’t get a word in.
“Paloma is just a sweetheart. When we were introduced, she said: ‘I don’t know who you are, cos I don’t have a telly.’”
This fifth series will be the final one on the Beeb before the show channel-hops over to ITV, which poached it at the end of last year. Emma doesn’t want to comment on the deal specifically (“I don’t know what the politics of TV channels are”), but hasn’t ruled out moving over to ITV with it if they want her.
“I’ll just wait and see. They might want to change it and use someone else. There’s nothing I can do about that, so I’m not going to stress. I’m just going to do my job and, fingers crossed, it’ll all work out and...”
Something else will come along?
“Well, I hope so, otherwise I’m screwed!”
She’s only half-joking. Despite being one of the most in-demand and popular presenters in the country, the years of grafting on non-terrestrial channels and the spells she spent out of work in her 20s and early 30s mean Emma still lives in fear that the TV rug could be pulled from under her feet.
“Oh, I’m ready for it to end at any point. I can’t be 100 per cent cocksure, that’s just not me. The minute you think you’re safe and always going to work is when you get the massive let-down.
“So I always err on the side of caution, and think that I should make the most of it now because in a year I could be done and people may be bored of me.”
She’s disappointed but philosophical that Prized Apart, the BBC game show she hosted with Reggie Yates last summer, won’t be returning after the ratings struggled to get above 3 million.
“It’s the nature of the beast and there’s nothing you can do about it. In my opinion, ratings are for TV companies and channels to look at and worry about. If I did that, then it would affect how I did my job.
“I absolutely believed in Prized Apart. It’s a shame that you only get one series to give things a go, and then they say: ‘Right, didn’t work, let’s get rid of it.’ Nothing ever gets time to grow, change or try new things. That all costs money, so you’ve got to roll with it.”
One show that’s going nowhere is Big Brother. And neither is Emma. Her excitement over the celebrity version, which starts on Tuesday, is infectious.
“It’s not just a job to me – I love it. They are so brilliant at casting it, I never worry any more. I remember looking at Lee Ryan’s series [in January 2014] on paper and thinking: ‘Ooh, not sure about this one.’ And then you get them in there and they’re incredible.
“I know these days it’s very much an entertainment game show, but I still love the psychological experiment side. Everyone knows what Big Brother is about, and they go in there to play up to the cameras – to get airtime, to try and win it, whatever. But they’re still going through that psychology of meeting new people and it f**king with your head and I’m quite nosy about all of that.”
If she’s at all nervous about squeezing a baby into all of this, she’s not showing it.
“I’ve got a good balance. It’s really busy for the first third of the year, Big Brother takes up the middle bit, and then it’s bits and pieces of filming that aren’t too full-on after that. I’ll get two weeks of working every day and then two weeks at home and I like that.
“I look forwards at New Year. I’m not a planner. I go: ‘That was a good year, I wonder if next year is going to be anything like it or if it’s going to be s**t,’” she laughs. “I’ve said s**t a lot in this interview, haven’t I? Oh well, better than f**k.”
Other than that, she says she’s not making any plans, resolutions or setting goals.
“I don’t wish or hope and say: ‘This is what I want.’ I just take it as it comes and see what happens.”
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