A former X Factor contestant disillusioned with the music industry has spoken out about her “horrifying” experiences when she was a young artist.
Katie Waissel, who appeared on the ITV talent showin 2010, told Sky News that many women in the industry were “severely affected” by a string of issues including misogyny.
The former professional singer said she was sexually harassed during her career, and described the environment she found herself in as a “frightening place to be” at an age when she was “unsure of what [was] actually happening”.
Waissel said she feared losing her job if “zero-transparency” non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) were not signed – and that the contracts were presented to her without any independent legal advice.
“No one is forcing you to sign it, but you’re placed in a position where you’re signing a contract on unfair terms without protection or guidance,” she told The UK Tonight with Sarah-Jane Mee.
The 38-year-old described the music industry as male-dominated and said a “trickle-down effect” existed where bosses would behave in a certain manner, in turn setting a precedent for everyone else to copy their behaviour.
The Women and Equalities Committee’s inquiry found that sexual harassment and abuse were common in the sector, which it noted was routinely described as a “boy’s club”.
Praising the inquiry, Waissel said there was a hierarchy of the “same faces” from record labels, PR and marketing firms, chief editors and legal bodies who “all swim in the same pond”.
She said: “It’s a very small pond – with fish that believe they are large.”
‘Turning poison to medicine’
Waissel ditched the music industry in pursuit of a legal career that safeguards artists in creative industries. She founded the OWHL Foundation to help provide them with the guidance, support and relief she says she never had.
The mother-of-one added: “Music and creative industries are magical and if we can protect them for tomorrow that makes my heart happy. It’s turning poison to medicine.”
Image: Waissel in 2016. Pic: PA
In early 2023 it was reported that Waissel was planning a legal battle against Simon Cowell‘s Syco Entertainment, one of the companies behind the X Factor.
She told The Sun newspaper that the programme had “ruined my life”.
“There are so many of us who have been so trapped and it’s not fair, there was a huge imbalance in power,” she added.
Sky News approached Syco and Fremantle Media, the other firm behind the X Factor, but they did not respond.
Previously, Fremantle Media said it had “robust measures in place on the X Factor to ensure contestants were supported with no time limit on aftercare once the show had aired.”
Waissel appeared on the seventh season of the show. She was eliminated in the quarter-finals after performing the Kings Of Leon hit Sex On Fire and R.E.M.’s Everybody Hurts.
It is “pretty surreal”, Academy Award winner Reese Witherspoon admits, finding herself at the top of The New York Times bestsellers list.
When I meet the actress alongside her co-writer, best-selling author Harlan Coben, overnight the pair have learned that their thriller is now at number one.
He jokes: “I was texting her last night and saying you’ll now have to call yourself number one bestselling novelist, forget about Oscar winner!”
Image: Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben told Katie Spencer about their novel Gone Before Goodbye
As one of the most successful authors in the world, Coben has sold over 80 million books to date, while for Witherspoon this is new ground.
Not content with running a hugely successful production company responsible for a string of hits, as well as one of the most successful book clubs in the world, she explains she felt compelled to give writing a try.
“People want you to stay in your lane… as a creative person I think it’s impossible to just choose one kind of life.
“Creativity is infinite and who I was as a creative person when I was 20 is very different from the person I am now at 49.”
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Gone Before Goodbye, a thriller about a talented surgeon who finds herself caught up in a deadly conspiracy, is the result of Witherspoon daring to put her head above the parapet.
Image: Witherspoon says she felt compelled to give writing a try
Coben admits he was “a little wary” at first.
“I don’t co-write novels but when she made the pitch and started talking about it, I was like ‘dang that’s good, we can do something with that’.”
While countless celebrities work with ghostwriters, Coben says: “I said to her from day one ‘it’s only going to be you and me in here… no third person in here, I don’t do that’. So every word you [read] comes from Reese and me.”
Image: Coben has sold over 80 million books to date, while for Witherspoon this is new ground
Witherspoon explains: “He was like ‘if we’re going to do this, it’s going to have to be at a really high level because people going to expect a lot, so our bar was really high.”
“I said to her, in the beginning, novels are like a sausage,” Coben laughs. “You might like the final taste, but you don’t want to see how it was made and Reese got to see the full sausage getting made here.”
When it came to writing, Coben says they “fell into a rhythm right away”, working together in three-hour stints, “back and forth with a yellow legal pad – what about this? What about that?”
Image: Coben says they ‘fell into a rhythm right away’
Witherspoon says it “feels really deeply personal” to have their work now in print.
“Usually, as an actor, I walk into other people’s worlds and it’s already set up… but this was creating the whole world with Harlan and just from beginning to end feels very personal.”
While the story seems an obvious fit for being adapted to the screen, perhaps with a certain blonde actress in the leading role, Coben says that was never their intention.
“The biggest, biggest mistake novelists make when you write a book is to say ‘this would make a really great movie’. A book is a book, a movie is a movie, and we both focused on wanting this to be just a great reading experience.”
Given that their collaboration is already selling in big numbers, will the pair team up again to write a second?
Witherspoon says: “Let’s just see what people think of this one first.”
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Associate professor of neurology Dr Laura Stein told Sky’s US partner NBC News: ” The most well-described risk factors include a predisposition [family history of aneurysm], high blood pressure, cigarette smoking and inflammation.”
She went on to explain that most fatal ruptured aneurysms are in the brain, killing about one in three patients.
“When it’s a blood vessel that’s in the head and it bleeds, there’s a much higher risk of having a very bad problem just because the brain is enclosed in a fixed space,” Dr Stein added.
Low-risk aneurysms are monitored by doctors for growth or abnormalities, and there are a series of potential treatment options for those considered dangerous.
Elsewhere in The Kardashians clip, Kim admitted that her ex-husband Kanye West will be in her life “no matter what” because of the four kids they share together.