In real life and in her new novel, the iconic Spice Girl is all about the power of connection.
Only three minutes have passed since Geri Halliwell-Horner appeared on my computer screen, but that's all it takes for us to find a groove. The famous redhead, 51, slides into easy chitchat about her 6-year-old son's fascination with the Titanic, evidenced by the Lego model of the doomed ship that sits behind her in frame. She asks for details about my parents and where I grew up; she wonders if I'm married or have any kids of my own. When I reply no, I'm not and I don't, she smiles and says, "You have plenty of time."
To the untrained eye, it's a scene of sweet domesticity: a wife and mother of two offers serene reassurance from her London home among her child's toys. There's a flicker of familiarity in her easy chatter that feels like catching up with a family member — if that family member happened to be one-fifth of the best-selling girl group in history.
Halliwell-Horner doesn't actually know me, but like a generation of music fans, I've known her for years. She was 23 when the Spice Girls took over the pop world in 1996 with their debut single, "Wannabe." As the quintet's eldest member, she functioned as the de facto frontwoman and leading purveyor of their "girl power" motto. She was feisty, unfiltered, and firmly egalitarian. She even pinched Prince Charles' butt in a major breach of royal protocol. "I pinch everyone's bottom," she told Rolling Stone. "Why am I going to stop at the Prince?"
Twenty-five years after she infamously left the Spice Girls, Halliwell-Horner's place among music history's pop icons has solidified: Adele said she used to cosplay as Ginger Spice, and that the singer's departure from the group was the first time she felt "truly heartbroken." Billie Eilish recently confessed that she grew up with a "fat crush on Ginger."
The woman sitting in front of me on-screen may have swapped her signature Union Jack dress and platform boots for a far more businesslike white chiffon top — she only wears white these days — but her commitment to female empowerment was no costume. It shines through in our conversation, as well as in her latest turn as a novelist.
The pivot from pop star to author may not seem obvious, but Halliwell-Horner has always had a reputation for wielding words with passion. "Geri's brilliant with lyrics," her fellow Spice Girl Melanie "Mel C" Chisholm told Rolling Stone in 1997, at the height of their fame. The reporter also described her as the chattiest of the group.
For her part, Halliwell-Horner says that writing books was a natural progression from songwriting. "I always just loved storytelling," she tells me. "They both, to me, are the same."
When it came to writing her debut young adult novel, "Rosie Frost and the Falcon Queen," out now, she didn't have to look far for inspiration: It's about a girl with grit, determination, and, of course, red hair.
The book follows the titular character through a series of physical and emotional challenges after she's suddenly orphaned and sent to a school for extraordinary teens. But unlike the popular characters in "Harry Potter" or the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Rosie doesn't have magic powers or special skills. She's a normal teen and, according to Halliwell-Horner, "not perfect in any shape or form."
"It's about an ordinary person, about finding the courage you never knew you had," she explains. "It's completely human. And I thought that's far more modern."
Before stardom came for Halliwell-Horner, she was raised in the London suburb of Watford by her father, a British car salesman, and her mother, a cleaner from Spain. She studied A-level English literature. Shortly before she auditioned to join the Spice Girls, she was pulled out of class and informed that her father had died from a heart attack.
Halliwell-Horner says she can't help drawing from her real life — her young protagonist is teased for being a "ginger," and, in one early scene, is pulled out of class and informed that her mother has suddenly died. In retrospect, she's realized that giving Rosie a voice helped her understand her own trauma.
"I did not have any tools to process grief. I felt embarrassed," she says of her father's death. "I didn't realize until I'd written it — that scene that I write in chapter one is what I really experienced."
Where Halliwell-Horner had her fellow Spice Girls to lean on (and their songs, the most famous of which proudly declares, "friendship never ends"), Rosie forges everlasting bonds with her classmates as she makes her way through teen tribulations.
Halliwell-Horner says it's no accident that the theme of friendship runs like a current through her career. She's always taking inspiration from her own life and her community, including her bandmates, to create lifelike characters. "You take little ingredients and then you make your own recipe."
Music is still part of the mix, too. "Rosie Frost and the Falcon Queen" was released alongside two new songs, which readers can hear by scanning a QR code on the book's cover. One of them, a hopeful ballad titled "Beautiful Life," was written solely by Halliwell-Horner.
"Life can be so compromising," she sings over swelling piano chords. "Just when you thought you were dying / You were metamorphosing / Like a butterfly."
While friendship is the cornerstone of Halliwell-Horner's life and the Spice Girls' legacy is defined by contagious pop hooks and calls for "chicas to the front," the band's success was marred by slights and snubs from the male-dominated press. Their hits were dismissed as drivel while the actual women were criticized as phonies and bimbos — insults that reek of misogyny. Halliwell-Horner herself was mocked as "Podge Spice" in the British tabloids.
"That's really fucking negative and dangerous for little girls," she told Rolling Stone at the time. "Can you imagine a big girl who looks at herself and looks at me and thinks, 'Shit, if she's getting called Podge Spice, what does that make me?'"
You try and stand up for what you think, and then you just make some headway. Compared to what it was before, it's better. I'm grateful for women that went before me.
Thanks to their unshakable sense of humor, the Spice Girls made it work. Even the nicknames that became their alter-egos — in addition to Ginger, there was Posh, Scary, Sporty, and Baby — began as a jab from the media. They simply took it in stride, embraced their caricatured identities, and made it work in their favor.
"That individuality was real, nothing was put on us," Halliwell-Horner recalls now. "But then I think somebody in a magazine said it just as a joke, just in a cartoon. Then we thought, 'That's quite good.'"
Even today, Halliwell-Horner insists that she doesn't hold a grudge for the gendered attacks she weathered in the press.
"I feel like it's progress, not perfection," she tells me, though she also wonders if women are simply taught to "suck it up" more often than men.
"Every generation just accepts what they learn. You try and stand up for what you think, and then you just make some headway," she continues. "Compared to what it was before, it's better. I'm grateful for women that went before me."
One of these women is Anne Boleyn. The controversial former queen of England, the second wife of Henry VIII, is best known for her death: she was painted as a "scheming seductress" and executed for treason. Many historians now understand her as a victim of her husband's cruel whims.
In the prologue for "Rosie Frost and the Falcon Queen," it's revealed that Rosie's new home, Heverbridge School, was founded by Boleyn's daughter, Queen Elizabeth I, to honor her mother. Throughout the book, Boleyn's influence can be felt floating through its hallowed halls — sometimes literally, as a ghost.
Halliwell-Horner says she was inspired to ground Rosie's fantastical story in real historical details. But when she would propose Boleyn as a possible character, she was shocked by the response from her trusted team.
"They went, 'Oh no, no, no. That's a really terrible idea.' I said, 'Why?' They said, 'Well, nobody likes her,'" Halliwell-Horner explains. "I thought, 'OK, let's unpack it, let's see if it's the truth of who she was.' The more I found out about her, I just felt this is unjust and unfair that she was..." Halliwell-Horner trails off, searching for the right word. "Slut-shamed."
"So let's humanize this woman that was just a young woman, early 30s, that got executed by a misogynistic pig. And she had a 3-year-old little girl. Can you imagine that?" she exclaims.
Halliwell-Horner recognized an opportunity — to confront the old foe of a sexist smear campaign.
"I felt deeply sorry for this woman," she says. "She was smart and kind and just caught up in somebody else's narrative."
In the '90s, Spice Girl skeptics followed a familiar pattern, insisting the group's cries of "girl power!" were meaningless, empty words. But if Halliwell-Horner is sure about anything, it's that words are never meaningless. As we say our goodbyes, it seems like she can't resist one final chance to bestow confidence — to inoculate me against somebody else's narrative.
"Thank you so much," she says before hanging up. "You're gorgeous. Take care."