Dancer, Choreographer, Actress, Musician—Mette Towley Is a New Kind of Breakout Star
Deep in the San Fernando Valley, Mette Towley is sitting barefoot on a red velvet couch in a shed turned music studio; an oversize silk shirt hangs loosely from her curvy frame, and a single diamond earring dangles from her ear. A producer who goes only by “Jimmy” has just stepped out of the early-evening session, in which he and Towley have been working on songs for her first-ever EP, due this spring. Since 2018, Towley has been spending more time in London, where she filmed Cats—the musical motion picture directed by Tom Hooper, out in December. But when she is in Los Angeles, she can typically be found in a studio like this one—often after a morning workout at Modo Yoga or Bünda (“Home of the better butt,” according to its website). “I think I’ve always been more interested in the process than anything else,” explains the barefaced 28-year-old, who has dark, short hair and broad shoulders—40 centimeters across, which is unusual for a dancer, she tells me. Towley is referring as much to the music she’s making as to the last two years of her life, which got her here in the first place.
A Minnesota native who studied American modern dance and dance theory, Towley moved to L.A. in 2013. “I auditioned for everything—cruise lines, private parties,” she recalls. She landed gigs as a backup dancer, most notably in 2014 with Pharrell Williams, with whom she toured for more than four years. When Rihanna shaved Towley’s head in the opening scene of N.E.R.D and Rihanna’s 2017 hit video “Lemon,” Towley officially arrived. She was the standout star, delivering a viral performance that dripped with expression, strength, and swagger. She toured globally with N.E.R.D the following summer, and those signature moves earned her her own fan base, not to mention a Revlon contract, a string of high-profile choreography gigs, and a big dose of confidence. “I just finally believed in myself,” Towley says.
When she returned from tour, Towley sold most of her personal belongings, downsized her apartment, and started working out five days a week with a trainer—ropes, weighted ball slams, squats, boxing—convinced she’d need to be physically and mentally prepared for a big break. During one of these sessions, at MusclePharm fitness in Burbank, Mike Knobloch, the president of Global Film Music and Publishing at Universal Pictures, interrupted his own workout to approach her. He had seen her dance and was wondering: Would she audition for Cats—and could she come in tomorrow? “He asked me if I could sing, too,” says Towley, who grew up listening to James Taylor and watching Rosie Perez on Soul Train, and Vera-Ellen and Danny Kaye on Turner Classic Movies.
Towley nabbed the role of Cassandra—a Siamese cat and the female counterpart to Munkustrap (played by Robbie Fairchild)—and while on set for 17 hours a day in oil-based, dark-brown cat makeup and a spandex onesie, she was also waking up at 4:15 a.m. to train for her role in this fall’s Hustlers. To play a stripper named Justice, Towley transformed again, growing out the hair she had kept short since the Rihanna incident, wearing long neon acrylic nails, and carrying her stripper pole with her everywhere in a golf travel case. While finishing up work on Cats, she had a realization: “I was singing live every day; it was a different part of me that I wasn’t sharing.”
Her as-yet-unnamed EP, which she describes as music to move to with a tempo inspired by electronic/pop dance, will set Towley on a multidisciplinary path carved out by living legends such as her Hustlers costar Jennifer Lopez, which is slightly daunting for someone who still tussles with self-confidence. “The pressure to sustain a particular body image is very intense for dancers from my generation—and women in general,” Towley says. “I remember times when I did not feel free in my own body”—an experience that inspired her to create a body-positive comic book. That means Towley will soon add published author to her increasingly crowded résumé, a testament to her belief that performance in any medium is an integral part of how we relate to each other. “We are mirrors for one another.”
Originally Appeared on Vogue
