B*Witched star Lindsay Armaou has opened up about a “really intense” experience filming opposite a Hollywood actor. The singer, who shot scenes for drama The Bombing of Pan Am for Netflix and BBC, admitted the role pushed her into an emotional place as an actor.
Lindsay plays Aphrodite, the mother of one of the young women killed in the bombing, and said working alongside the Hollywood star was an “amazing experience”.
Scene with Patrick Adams
She tells Daily Star in collaboration with Zingo Bingo: “I got to do a really intense scene with Patrick Adams from Suits. He was amazing to work with. And it was a really, really great experience, actually.
“It was a scene where I'm one of the parents of one of the young women who got killed on the plane. And she's very emotional and she's challenging him (Patrick Adams) in a press conference scenario. It was a great, great experience. But yeah, I'd love to get my teeth into some more acting. Definitely.”
Career from pop to acting
The role marks another chapter in a career that has taken Lindsay from topping the charts with B*Witched to exploring acting. And while she remains a huge part of the band's ongoing success, she is keen to sink her teeth into more challenging characters.
“It's more about the role for me rather than the actual show itself,” she says. “I want to delve into a character very far from what I am, but then bring myself to it.
“I'd love to get my teeth into a character who was really multi-dimensional with lots of layers.”
But Lindsay's acting ambitions are just one part of a career that began with one of the biggest pop hits of the late 1990s. Nearly 30 years after B*Witched stormed the charts with C'est La Vie, Lindsay is still performing the smash hit alongside Keavy Lynch, Edele Lynch and Sinéad O'Carroll.
And she remains amazed that fans continue to go wild whenever those opening bars ring out. “It's crazy that people still love the song and still want to hear it,” Lindsay says. “When we perform it live, the reaction that it still gets is incredible. When we do it at the end, the energy just shifts in the venue. Everyone's energy just goes up about 10 notches. They just love it.”
Road to stardom
It is a far cry from the group's early days, when their route to pop stardom involved school assemblies, under-18 nightclubs and plenty of graft. For around a year, the girls travelled around Ireland, performing at schools in the mornings before heading to under-18 clubs in the evenings and squeezing in local radio appearances. “We really did put the groundwork in,” Lindsay recalls.
Then C'est La Vie arrived in May 1998 and everything changed. After the song shot to number one, the group's record company suddenly knew they had something huge on their hands. “The record company just went crazy,” Lindsay says. “They were just like, this is it! This is the first single. We're ready to go now. All systems go.”
For Lindsay, the reality of becoming a chart-topping pop star was almost impossible to process. “It was just a really, really surreal moment where you thought, am I dreaming? Am I actually dreaming? What do you mean we're at number one?”
One of her favourite memories came when the four girls watched themselves appear on Top of the Pops. They were living together just outside London and sat down on a Friday night to watch the pre-recorded show, knowing they were about to see themselves at the top of the charts. “When we came on the screen, seeing yourself like that with a number one for the first time, it was so surreal and amazing,” she says.
The whirlwind that followed was relentless, with B*Witched working from dawn until dusk and travelling between countries at breakneck speed. “We were working from dawn till dusk, it was 14 - 16 hour days,” Lindsay says. “We were advised to ride the wave, and we really did.”
These days, however, the band have a much healthier approach to life in the spotlight. B*Witched reunited in 2012 and Lindsay says they now have much more control over their career. “Everything that we do as a band and as a brand, is very much on our terms now,” she says. “We have more control of what we do, how we do it, and how much time we put into it.”
