Ex-Hollyoaks and Emmerdale Star Moves to the US for New Country Music Video and Talks Acting Return

UK country sensation Twinnie has today released the music video for her new song Don’t Need A Cowboy. 

Filmed in Joshua Tree, California, it sees the former Hollyoaks and Emmerdale star, 38, turn the desert into a dancefloor.

Cloaked in sequins and surrounded by disco balls she proudly states her romantic independence in the upbeat pop country track.

‘Unless it’s a man that is stepping up to the plate and adding something to your life then you don’t need it,’ she tells the Daily Mail, citing the girl power of Dolly Parton, Shania Twain and the Spice Girls as influences on her music.

The Yorkshire native certainly knows a thing or two about doing it yourself. 

Having swapped the streets of Chester for Nashville, she’s been carving out a career for herself as an independent artist in the country industry with her albums Something We Used To Say and Hollywood Gypsy.

 She recently worked with Rob Brydon on his BBC series Honky Tonk Road Trip. 

Twinnie gave Rob a tour of Nashville and taught him about the country music scene. She even took Rob line-dancing, a favourite hobby of his Gavin and Stacey character Uncle Bryn.

‘He was just great to have fun with,’ she says of the BBC star. 

‘He’s from Wales and it was nice to have a familiar face from home to show around.’

Speaking of home, she lists the ‘banter’ and, unusually, the food as one of the main things she misses about the UK. ‘I miss the chocolate and I miss the tea. You can’t really get Yorkshire Tea over there’.

Yorkshire is not the only side of her heritage that she wears proudly. 

Her father is a Romani gypsy and she takes her representation of the gypsy culture seriously. 

‘It’s really important because most of the media paint that community in a bad light and there was nobody in my community doing what I wanted to do growing up.’

American travellers now come to her shows in the US.

‘I want my life to be an act of service and I love to share,’ she says. 

‘I feel like that’s my purpose so if I can inspire someone from my community or someone from my hometown that has grown up without those opportunities or without the money like how I did…that is the backbone of who I am.’

Speaking of her roots, she recently reunited with her Hollyoaks castmates including Jorgie Porter and Jennifer Metcalfe to celebrate the soap’s 30th anniversary.

‘It was really special to be a McQueen,’ she says of her fictional soap family. ‘I have to give it to Hollyoaks, they really do push the boundaries of these hard hitting storylines.’ 

Twinnie’s character Porsche McQueen was sexually assaulted by her mother’s boyfriend as a teenager, a storyline that saw her work with the NSPCC.

Many of her Hollyoaks fans still come to see her shows now. Will she ever return to acting? ‘If there’s an opportunity that arises and I really wanna do it then we’re not gonna say no.’

For now her focus is firmly on music. ‘There’s never been a British female to have an American country number one,’ she says, aiming straight for the top. 

How does she feel about her chances as a woman in the notoriously tough country industry? ‘In Nashville you can see from the charts that it reflects it’s very guy heavy and I’m not really sure why that is to be honest,’ she says, pointing to industry heavyweights like Lainey Wilson and Megan Moroney as examples of women succeeding by being ‘undeniably themselves’.

‘I think it was like the ninth album before Fleetwood Mac actually broke and it took Chappell Roan four years for Pink Pony Club to gain that massive global success that she had,’ she says. ‘You’ve just not got to lose hope.’

Twinnie is set to tour the UK for a number of dates as she prepares to take to the stage in London, Brighton, Manchester, York and Glasgow.