Reyna Roberts on Learning to Pole Dance for Her New Music Video: 'If I Failed, at Least I Tried!'
Reyna Roberts has always struggled with self-confidence. The red-haired rising country star claims to be clumsy and shy and still has trouble considering herself anything sort of a superstar in the making.
But she might just need to start getting used to that title.
"I'm trying really hard to feel more confident in terms of my self-image and sexiness," explains Roberts, 25, in a revealing interview with PEOPLE. "That's something I've never been extremely confident in."
To help, she decided to take pole dancing lessons.
"I've always looked at pole dancers and just been amazed at their flexibility," she says. "Just to have the courage to get onto a spinning pole and put themselves in crazy positions...it was something I wanted to be able to do. I wanted to have that athleticism and strength. And if I failed, as least I tried."
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And when Roberts realized that she might need some assistance installing a pole in her home for her to practice on, she knew who she had to call.
"I called my dad," she admits with a laugh. "He was proud of me, because he's proud that I am not afraid to be a hundred percent myself and put myself out there regardless of what other people might think of it or feel about it."
It's an internal power that Roberts says she got from her mama.
"My mom has always been really wild," Roberts explains, giggling. "The music video was all her idea."
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Indeed, pole dancing serves as the creative cornerstone of Roberts' music video for her song "Pretty Little Devils."
"She was all about featuring a real-life carousel in the video, where we would have the pole dancers spinning around and such," explains Roberts, who spent the past year opening for legendary country artists such as Reba McEntire and Jamey Johnson. "It was one of the first things we captured on set. I always wanted to have [pole dancing] in my video, and I certainly didn't want to get a double to do my part."
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Roberts put her new skills to work in the music video, which also includes the talents of many of Roberts' friends — a few of whom came to be in the video thanks to some odd circumstances.
"Some of the dancers are my mom's old college students," explains Roberts of the people featured in the video — including her good friend and leading man, model Ty Warner — with a laugh. "She used to teach them in her psychology class. One day my mom introduced me to them, they were my age, and we just hit it off."
JD / UnknownCertainty Ty Warner and Reyna Roberts
And just by coincidence, one of Roberts' new friends also happened to be pole dancer, whom she then invited to become yet another piece of the saucy music video.
"I wanted to make sure that the visuals we captured didn't oversexualize things," Roberts says. "I wanted to make sure that everyone felt confident in what they were doing and how they were portrayed. I wanted to make sure that we were capturing the art and the choreography of the pole dancing and not what people assume pole dancing is. Most people think they are strippers going to the clubs, but they aren't."
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Granted, the story of the girl with the fiery look and the sweet-as-molasses heart is one with many chapters, in which "Pretty Little Devils" puts the spotlight on yet another piece of Roberts' soul.
"Something that I've actually really struggled with has been capturing all the elements of me," says Roberts, who is currently working on her debut album set for release in 2023. "But I feel like this year, I was able to find myself and make it all cohesive. I'm sitting down at the piano and playing big ballads. I'm doing traditional country songs. I'm doing trap country songs. Soon, everybody will be able to see the spectrum of who I am as an artist."
