Sia hides her face when she appears in public. Photo / Getty Images
It wasn't an easy ride, the pop star tells Francesca Angelini, even though her film has a Golden Globe nomination.
Sia Furler was midway through directing her first feature film, Music, when Katy Perry dropped out of a cameo part at the last minute. Furler sent the script to Beyoncé, naturally, but didn't hear back. "I was, like, 'Oh my God, I need a pop star, I need a pop star, I need a pop star.'"
This is the puzzle that is Sia. The 45-year-old Australian singer-songwriter is a pop star, one of the most successful on the planet. As a one-woman hit-writing machine, she's given Adele, Rihanna and Beyoncé some of their biggest moments. And she is a multimillion-selling solo artist with eight studio albums to her name. The problem is, she doesn't like to show her face. For seven years in public she has kept it hidden behind her iconic bob wig. Sometimes even under a paper bag.
A campaign of inaccessibility normally surrounds her releases. This time she's granting an interview because she says she badly wants Music, her directorial debut about the relationship between an autistic girl called Music and her self-hating sister, Zu (a buzz-cutted Kate Hudson), to succeed; it's something of a life work for her.
Its fate hangs in the balance. When we spoke not long into the new year, the trailer had triggered a social media frenzy about Furler not casting a person with autism for the main role, which is played by Maddie Ziegler, the limby dance prodigy Furler used in the music videos for her huge hits Chandelier (2014) and Elastic Heart (2013). Music has been nominated in the best musical category at the Golden Globes, but criticism has mounted, especially over its depiction of Music being restrained face down by her sister and their neighbour. Two weeks ago Furler released a statement apologising and saying she had "listened to the wrong people" and would remove the restraint scenes. She has deleted her Twitter account.
Which appears to be something of a U-turn from what she said when we spoke. She had seemed deflated yet defensive about the initial criticism, but didn't say she had got things wrong. She had cast a woman with autism, warned that she should by other directors, but the role was too stressful for the actor, whose mother had stepped in.
"I got Maddie back on board. I've learnt I'm ableist. And while I may have spoken to 20 factions of the autism community, I didn't speak to another 20 factions. I actually didn't even know the other 20 existed."
Music, she says, is "the most important thing" she has done. Making it took its toll, made her "very sick", and it's easy to align her with the character of Zu; Furler has had her own battles with alcohol and depression. You sense she didn't grasp how sensitive a subject she was dealing with. It seems very much as if she is still working things out as she goes along.
"I wasn't able to talk to everybody that's on the spectrum," she continues. "So I thought I had done a really amazing job. I thought I had done thorough research, and it turned out there's a whole lot of people that want the exact opposite."
Furler is an eccentric. She's hilarious, opinionated and happy to talk about anything. Her Zoom camera is turned off (face issues), but to give me a picture she says she is at home in Los Angeles "all glammed up" and doing the splits. In the end she stepped up in Perry's place for the cameo in Music, sending herself up as a diva getting a facial while illegally buying prescription painkillers to fly into Haiti for its earthquake relief effort.
"Just being able to take the mickey out of yourself, I think it's a necessity for life. We're all going to be irrelevant one day," she says. The Haitian drug drop-off, though, I assume, is made up? "Oh no, that really happened. We smuggled them in on a Scientologist's plane." Of course she did.
Interspersed with the narrative about Zu and Music and their kind neighbour Ebo (played by Hamilton's Leslie Odom Jr) are exuberant, candy-coloured music-and-dance sequences. The songs, released as an accompanying album, are full-on Sia; raspy, crooning numbers with cathedral-like highs and lows and empowering themes about learning to trust and togetherness. The general gist is a celebration of what music can do to lift people up.
However, it's the lyrics of Courage to Change, an anthem about bravery, that seem key: "I want my life to matter/ I am afraid I have no purpose here." How personal is all this?
"I was having such a hard time just being alive, and the cyclical, ruminative thoughts of killing myself were very intrusive," Furler says matter-of- factly. "I think a lot of the songs were pep letters to myself, 'You could do it one more day, you're going to conquer this, stay alive.'"
Furler's ability to knock out commercial hits is extraordinary — Rihanna's Diamonds took her 14 minutes to write — and she's frank about how she feels about some of them. "There are at least three songs I think are absolute shit, but that have literally bought me swimming pools and floorboards from France." She won't name which, but I'd put money on Titanium.
Fame and putting herself out there have never come easy to Furler. She started out in the acid-funk-jazz outfit Crisp as a teenager in Adelaide before moving to London. For 15 years she was a solid indie artist. But as her career progressed, so too did her prescription pills and alcohol intake. In 2010, after coming close to suicide, she checked into Alcoholics Anonymous and has been sober since. Songwriting began to bring in megacheques (and floorboards) and, just when she was ready to pack in her solo career, Chandelier, her epic song about her days living on the edge, set the charts alight.
"But I didn't want to be a pop star," she says. Her route out of this fix? The wig. "I thought, 'Maybe this is going to be a way I can still be a successful artist, but not be a famous person.'" A stage-shunning pop star was born.
Does she not get a buzz from performing? "No!" she says emphatically. "I only did when I was drinking . . . without it I was very anxious and shy." The indie artist in her was also uncomfortable with the inauthenticity that came with touring. "I'm not there going, 'Helloooooo, Bangkok!' or 'I love you, Argentina-aaaaaaa!' I've seen performers who say the same lines every time in between songs, and I think that is kind of fraudulent."
In 2014 she married the film-maker Erik Lang after dating for a short time; they divorced two years later. Which brings us to Shia LaBeouf, who was originally meant to play Hudson's role in Music. After it was announced this year that FKA twigs was suing him for sexual battery and assault, Furler tweeted cryptically that LaBeouf had conned her into an adulterous relationship. What was that about?
"It turns out he was using the same lines on me and Twigsy, and eventually we found out because we ended up talking to one another. Both of us thought we were singly dating him. But that wasn't the case. And he was still married."
Furler has known LaBeouf for years — he appears, unforgettably, in her video for Elastic Heart, writhing around in flesh-coloured underpants. "He said he wanted to marry me and live a sober life," she continues, adding that he was never physically abusive. "But you know, I feel like I'm always gonna love him because he's such a sick puppy."
Things are looking up. She has joined a dating programme, Sex & Love Addicts Anonymous, and, after a diagnosis of complex PTSD, a change in her medication has improved her mental health. Lockdown, she says, hasn't had much of an impact. "I was basically quarantining for three years before Covid came along." She spends hours in bed each day with her dogs, watching reality TV. If people do recognise her when she goes out, most respect her privacy.
What do the many megastars she has worked with think? Are they jealous? "Every actor, every singer, every performer I've ever met has just been, like, 'Well, you f***ing hit the jackpot.'"
Music is currently playing in some New Zealand cinemas. The album Music — Songs from and Inspired by the Motion Picture is out now.
Written by: Francesca Angelini
© The Times of London
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