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It is a rare alignment of the stars that allows a self-proclaimed, multi-hypehnate “model, actress, whatever” to live both of their biggest dreams at the same time and then have one of them turn into her main gig. But that’s where English singer/actress/model Suki Waterhouse finds herself these days as she prepares to release her second studio album, Memoir of a Sparklemuffin.

After a memorable turn as keyboardist Karen Sirko in the 2023 Amazon Prime musical drama series Daisy Jones & the Six, Waterhouse, 32, tells Billboard the show “definitely” helped her to get more focused on her musical dreams. “I guess that show was really special, because it kind of put me in that world for a long time,” she says of the courage the show about a fictional Fleetwood Mac-style battling band gave her to pursue her music with renewed energy.

“When I started doing that show, I still was, like… ‘you could never do that,’” she says of the pervasive thoughts convincing her that she couldn’t pull off her character, or a tour, or release a follow-up to her debut 2022 Sub Pop full-length LP, I Can’t Let Go. “I was very much in this like, ‘Oh no, you’re, you’re not good enough to do that. Or, like, you just that just won’t happen for you’… that was just where I was mentally.” But after spending hours and hours a day in L.A.’s legendary Sound City Studios working on songs for the series and learning new chords she realized that all that pretend rocking could be turned into the songs for her about-to-be-released sophomore album, which drops on Friday (Sept. 13).

“It as very special to be able to do something that combines [my two loves and] really moves you in your own life as well, it’s very unique,” says the veteran of such films as Detective Pikachu, A Rainy Day in New York and Billionaire Boys Club and one of the hand-picked opening acts on Taylor Swift’s August 17 Eras Tour gig at London’s Wembley Stadium.

The London native got her start as a teenage model before breaking into movies in 2012 and then pivoting to music in 2016 with her debut single, “Brutally.” She says the process for recording Sparklemuffin was a world away from that of her debut because when she first started in music she didn’t have a label or anyone behind her after nearly a decade of self-releasing songs.

“And then Sub Pop said yes, but I had to kind of really bang down the door,” she says. “It took like, six months of writing emails, and they said, ‘No, we don’t want to listen to any songs from models or actresses, whatevers.’ So it was a completely different experience this time. I’ve been able to collaborate with different people and have different artists that I could call up, and a few more people wanted to get in the room with me than they did before. So it was, like, very, very different in that way.”

The other thing that was very different was that Waterhouse was pregnant with her first child with fiancé actor Robert Pattinson; she gave birth in March of this year. That was news she was trying to keep secret until she got sick during a car ride to the studio, at which point the cat was out of the bag. “I was really like, glad to have a project that I was so into whilst also being pregnant, because it was like, you know, you’re just powering through,” she says. “And it was great to have a distraction. And I kind of had this thing in my head where I’m like, ‘I’m just going to power through. Who cares? I’m going to vomit sometimes.. and then you feel fine afterwards.”

For more about the album and the inspiration behind the guys-going-way-too-hard at the club single “Blackout” and the great tips Alison Wonderland gave her for touring with a baby check out the video above.