Here at Glamour, our utmost mission is to empower women and their endeavours to find strength and success in their chosen field – whether it be politics, sport, music or film & TV – as well as their wider lives.
So this year, as part of our Women of the Year Awards, we profiled six remarkable women from the entertainment industry who have had the spotlight firmly on them in 2025.
As trans rights face increasing threat in the UK, Glamour honours nine of the community's most ground-breaking voices at this year's Women of the Year Awards. From fashion and music to charity and activism work, these trailblazers work tirelessly to empower, uplift and celebrate trans voices.
We spoke to My Fault star and multi-hyphenate Asha Banks, Karen Pirie's Lauren Lyle, pop queen Flowerovlove, Doctor Who and Andor star Varada Sethu, one-woman-show-star-turned-TV-writer Nicôle Lecky and Rose Gray, whose dance music is causing a revolution of mind, body and soul.
All six women opened up about navigating male-dominated industries, finding peace with themselves and what the future holds for them – whether it's a world tour, a role acting alongside Gavin and Stacey's Ruth Jones or anticipating their return to the stage after a stint on screens.
Below, get to know Glamour's six Women of the Year Spotlight profiles.
Varada Sethu: “People have a hunger for human stories and diversity”
Stepping on the set of Doctor Who, Indian-born and Newcastle-bred Varada Sethu recalls feeling “real imposter syndrome” about playing Belinda, the companion of Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor. She was, though, immediately put totally at ease by queer icon and showrunner Russell T Davies' regular text messages of encouragement. She then went on to play one half of the first openly written live-action lesbian couple in the Star Wars universe in prequel TV series Andor, alongside Faye Marsay. To Glamour, she calls the queer community “my favourites”.
For Varada, the best thing about bringing this story to the screen is that “nobody batted an eyelid about it on set”. She was, however, warned about the potential for social media fallout, after Obi-Wan Kenobi star Moses Ingram received hundreds of racist, abusive messages. Luckily, Faye and herself fared better from the trolls than Moses did.
She describes her own fight for representation on screen for women of colour as “exhausting”. But, she adds, “I think the only way is to be a broken record, to keep saying it again and again and again until it's normal.”
“People have a hunger for human stories and diversity,” Varada says, describing a parallel “pushback with artists and people of colour where we're going to speak up even louder,”, as well as solidarity amongst her peers. “I love that I can think of four or five other actors, women of colour, in my industry that I would potentially be going up against for roles, and they all feel like sisters to me.”
We will next see Varada in a small role in film festival favourite 100 Nights of Hero, joining a stellar cast such as Emma Corrin, Maika Monroe and Charli XCX. “It is so unafraid to be weird and female-centred and feels so authentic,” she says of the script, adding that director Julia Jackman had to fight against a male-dominated industry to tell her story. “It was really hard for her to have to fight to keep it as authentic as she could because there are lots of straight, male voices in there that like to tell the woman who's creating the project what women think and what women would like to see,” she says.
Varada is also set to star in period drama series, The Other Bennett Sister, alongside none other than Gavin and Stacey’s Ruth Jones. She likens the series’ “representativeness of the female experience” and “authenticity” to the nature of 100 Nights of Hero, and was humbled by the universality of human experiences such as heartbreak and sibling rivalry. “These feelings and problems are so human and there’s something comforting in that.”
Asha Banks: “Women are used to feeling like we have to pick a lane”
Helming YA Amazon Prime Video film trilogy My Fault: London, playing Noah has made Asha Banks an expert on the “addictive” quality of forbidden love, which is the core premise of these films.
Above all, though, she says that the story being told through the gaze of directors Dani Girdwood and Charlotte Fassler and “having a female perspective leading the ship” was the most crucial component in ensuring the trilogy’s intimate scenes felt real. “It's a sexy film, for sure, but there's something so important about these young adult stories feeling like they have a woman's voice involved,” Asha tells Glamour. “That was something that was always so important, and I think has made them so much more real as well.”
After releasing her debut EP Untie My Tongue earlier this year (yes, she can act and sing!) Banks then collaborated with her own musical idol Holly Humberstone for a special edition of Humberstone’s track Dive, reimagining their own version of the song for the My Fault: London soundtrack.
Working with a fellow thriving young woman in music and “empowering each other” meant a lot. “It was so overwhelming to have somebody that I've looked up to and been inspired by want to work with me.” Especially as, in Asha’s experience, women are so often encouraged to “pick a lane”. “There’s a sense of surprise at women being all-rounders and doing absolutely everything to such high abilities. And I'm constantly inspired by those people.” she tells Glamour.
Before landing her leading role in My Fault: London, Asha starred alongside Wednesday star Emma Myers in the BBC TV adaptation of Holly Jackson novel A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder. She credits Emma’s “fantastic job leading the cast” as a “massive inspiration” to her as she prepared to lead her own film. “Watching her lead a cast, hold herself and interact with other people was so wonderful and impacted how I held myself” she says. “Taking that into My Fault was definitely a big thing.”
She describes finding power in being a multi-hyphenate, mixing her love of singing and acting. “I have a guitar in my trailer all the time, and I find it really helpful being able to return to myself, after playing a character all hours of the day,” Asha says.
So what’s next for her? Having begun production on My Fault: London sequel Your Fault: London, her second EP How Real Was It? – which “reflects on past relationships, friendships, situations, the things that made me ache in the moment” – is due out on 14 November, followed by a UK and Europe tour. She won’t be picking a lane anytime soon, as she feels that would be doing herself a disservice.
“I'm just trying to see what happens if I don't do that, and put my heart and soul into both and see how it works out.”
How Real Was It? is available to stream and buy from 14 November.
Lauren Lyle: “Karen Pirie is like going home. It feels like my house party.”
Following the release of ITV's Karen Pirie season 2, Lauren Lyle has reached a historic point in her career: she feels able to say no to work for the first time. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t worry she’ll never work again. “Robert De Niro feels the same way,” she tells Glamour. “He said so in an interview.”
After playing a female detective in a male-dominated police force in Karen Pirie (“it feels like going home, like my house party"), Lauren’s latest role in hit BBC TV series The Ridge sees her play a drug-addicted doctor fleeing her problems and career mistakes to her sister’s wedding in New Zealand, only to find her dead on arrival. To prepare for the role, Lauren spoke to addicts and researched “how an anaesthetist could easily steal drugs”. “Mia is also dealing with a lot of childhood trauma that she lets seep in,” she says of her character. “I enjoyed using my body in a way I haven’t for a role before.”
Lauren is also directing her first short film, Run Club, which she describes as “a really funny but dark depiction of some of the mad things we do in grief. And my mum dying is one of my biggest fears. It explores what that might be like, whilst also being set at a run club.”
“I felt like Greta Gerwig,” she said of her time directing. “I was like, ‘I never want to act again. This is so much more fun.’” Directing has been a dream of hers for a while, but she long felt hesitant due to the mystification of the job, which is so often done by men. “I think you're really told that it's such a difficult thing to do. I've wanted to do it for years, and been way too worried about it going badly and not being good enough,” she says, describing her frustration at watching male directors and superiors around her. “I was like, ‘I could just do that so much better than what you've done!’”
Inspired by the revolution of Irish acting talent in the entertainment industry, Lauren wants to represent Scotland in the same way. “Scotland can get tarnished with a bit of a traditional brush… but it’s probably, in this part of the world, one of the most progressive countries.”
Lauren is also set to star in David Ireland’s latest play at London’s Soho Theatre, Most Favoured, starring alongside Skins actor Alexander Arnold. The two hander sees a promiscuous pair embark on a one night stand, afterwards realising they both have secrets they’ve been hiding.
“It's so delicious as an actor to get something like that,” she says. “I started in theatre, and it can be like a bit of a snobby boys club… You need to get yourself back in there somehow, and prove yourself. So I'm excited to do it again. Be live.”
The Ridge is available to watch on BBC iPlayer now, while Most Favoured comes to Soho Theatre from 11 December.
Flowerovlove: “My live shows, they’re my wedding day – but I get to do it over and over again”
It’s 2025, and British-Ivorian singer-songwriter Flowerovlove (Joyce Cissé) is excited to have “popped the virginity” of her first arena show in Toronto, opening for Haim. Her September track I'm your first, is a quintessential pop bop with an empowering take on a break up.
Whenever things don’t work out with a love interest – for herself or her friends – her take is not to worry, as said ex couldn’t handle you being their “first bad b*tch”. “Everytime I get broken up with, I’m like, ‘i'm just too much of a baddie’” she tells Glamour, adding that she also has a hardline approach to the advent of “situationships” as a dating concept: “It's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, and I think everyone should be in therapy.” Her latest single, Shady, also sees her step behind the camera in her directorial debut for the music video.
Flowerovlove has previously spoken out about the “space to be filled” by Black women in the pop music world, which is undoubtedly dominated by white artists. “Every Black artist gets put under a label… If they're making alternative music that doesn't fit under, hip hop, rap or R&B, there’s so much unturned racism,” she tells Glamour. She points out that white pop stars such as Sabrina Carpenter and Chappelle Roan don’t get the same amount of scrutiny for experimenting with different genres.
Growing up in Essex – a predominantly white area of the UK – was “essential” to her finding herself “as strongly as I have now”.
"I don't think I'd be the person I am now if I didn't feel like I couldn't be myself [back then],” she says. Flowerovlove’s live shows mean everything to her – more than a traditional romance, in fact. “I don't dream about my wedding day. I'm just not that kind of girl,” she says. “I actually dream about my live shows. That's where I get to put on a fun costume, that's my wedding day, but I get to do it over and over again.”
Nicôle Lecky: “You always want to be doing roles that are challenging you in a different way”
Actor, singer and writer Nicôle Lecky thought she’d hit her peak when she got her gig writing for Eastenders spin-off, E20. When she visited the set of the iconic Queen Vic pub back in the 2010s, she thought her career couldn’t reach higher heights. “I didn't think I'd ever be happier in life ever again,” she tells Glamour. But of course, that wasn’t the case.
She went on to write one-woman show Super Hoe – a blisteringly honest take on social media and high-end sex work – which she then performed at London’s Royal Court Theatre in 2019. Then writing and starring in the TV adaptation, Mood, Nicôle joined the likes of Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Michaela Coel, whose one-woman shows also gained TV notoriety. For Nicôle, one-woman performances give us a chance to “root for the protagonist” something crucial when it comes to female-led stories.
Next, she is taking on privilege, the sexualisation of young women and – once again – the pervasive nature of social media in Gossip Girl-meets-Big Little Lies BBC TV series Wild Cherry. Set in an affluent area of England, it explores the lives of two families, one Black, one white, one successful through graft and hard work, one born rich.
There’s a poignant moment where young Grace talks to her mother Lorna about “having to be better” than others in the community, implicitly stating the extra work that Black women need to do to “measure up”. It was important to Nicôle that any microaggressions or discrimination were woven subtly into the script, to reflect the “insidious” nature of these experiences.
She described the series as a “coming of age” for two different generations of characters, the mothers and the daughters. Having both generations play an ensemble role in telling the story was crucial. She spoke to private school teens about the pressures they face, but was most inspired by the inescapable nature of the online world, and how that affects young people. “The influence of diet culture affects girls proportionately more than boys, across social media,” she says. “It’s incessant.”
Will Nicôle be back for season 2 of Ella Purnell’s ode to female anger, Sweetpea? Time will tell. The first instalment saw her play protagonist Rhiannon’s school bully, Julia, who managed to dodge the killing spree that the series is centred around. Nicôle describes enjoying infusing “human empathy” into her antiheroine. “You always want to be doing roles that are challenging you in a different way.”
Wild Cherry drops on Saturday 15 November on BBC iPlayer and BBC One.
Rose Gray on women in the music industry: “There's so much space for us all”
When Glamour catches up with dance pop euphoria aficionado Rose Gray, she has a day off from a victorious run of UK tour dates – including two at London's Village Underground – and is set to fly to Amsterdam the next day for another. One problem: she may be locked in her London flat, as she can’t find her keys. And is due at a Prada event later on.
“My partner let me in last night,” says, referring to her Babygirl star boyfriend and high school sweetheart Harris Dickinson. The couple have been dating for over 10 years, with him directing two of her music videos and recently releasing his directorial debut Urchin – talk about a power couple. But we are here to talk about Rose, who has been working with the likes of Little Mix’s JADE and Mel C on a deluxe version of her Louder, Please album – released earlier this year – named A Little Louder, Please.
“I've been able to travel with with the album and play shows all over the world,” she says of Louder, Please. “I felt like the record deserved that.” She describes being told she wasn't ready to be an “albums artist”, but still feeling determined to put it out. New tracks Lotus and April – which didn't make it onto the original album – will have their moment, featured on the deluxe version. “It was all meant to be, because they are getting their own moments and their proper flowers,” she says.
Having also opened for the likes of Sugababes, Charli XCX and Kesha, Rose describes feeling the female solidarity in the music industry firsthand, not the “women pit against each other” narrative. “Now I'm in this world, I have not experienced any of this. It's the opposite,” she says. “We all chat, we reach out to each other, it's so supportive. There's so much space for us all, and I think we're in a really exciting place for dance pop.”
She describes being fully in her body on stage as “the best feeling in the world”. “I just lose myself on stage,” Rose says, describing her role as giving her fans “the space to also lose themselves.”
With more tour dates and music coming, she debates with herself whether she is still viewed as “up and coming” as a musician, having been on the scene for 6 years. If one thing is clear, it's this: Rose Gray is not up and coming – she's arrived.
A Little Louder, Please is out now.
Photographer: Scarlett Casciello
Set Design: Harry Stayt
Digi Tech/Photography Assistant: Susie Brady
Photographer Assistant: Ben Hughes
Set Assistant: Issac Ashley
Set Assistant: Oliver Shaw
