New York (AP) — Suki Waterhouse started working on “Loveland,” her third record, immediately after she finished her 2024 sophomore album, “Memoir of A Sparklemuffin.”
“I was looking for, like, a personal revolution,” Waterhouse said. Putting the words together for “Loveland,” the album's wistful penultimate track, helped her get there. “It’s always amazing to me how, you kind of write the album and you become it. You become somebody new from it.”
True to that spirit, Waterhouse worked with new collaborators on the project — including songwriter Amy Allen and producer Aaron Dessner, a member of the rock band The National and a frequent collaborator of pop-crossover artists including Taylor Swift, Gracie Abrams and Noah Kahan. Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac put down a drum track for “Morals” — a fun twist after Waterhouse acted in the limited series “Daisy Jones & the Six,” based on a Taylor Jenkins Reid novel widely considered to be inspired by the band’s origins.
“Maybe that’s what made me think to reach out,” Waterhouse, said. “I thought, you know, maybe he’s seen the show. It might help me get in the door.”
Waterhouse spoke to The Associated Press about making “Loveland” and exploring the evolution she has felt since welcoming her daughter with partner Robert Pattinson. She also teased future projects. Remarks have been edited for clarity and brevity.
WATERHOUSE: A revelation I've had for myself recently is that there is inherently a friction there, that I think has been really deepened by becoming a parent. I think before I had much more of a kind of wild abandon, where my whole life was my work and my artistic life. And now that I have this beautiful gift that's been given to me — my daughter and this responsibility, and also how present I feel in her life, and want to be — I had a lot of insecurity and fear and doubt about how I was going to still have these two things exist at once. So it's funny, I don't think the record is like a record, really, about me, you wouldn't listen to it and be like, “Oh, this is a 'she's just become a mum' record" but it's the things I know about it that are laced deep within it. There are certain songs where I address that very rawly, I think in the song “Weirdo” especially.
WATERHOUSE: When I’m writing I don’t really think about that much at all because I also know that not everything that I write has to go on an album and be released into the public. There's things that you can write that can just be for yourself, and kind of like help you externalize a feeling that’s unexplainable.
It’s interesting, it’s like two different parts of my brain: The part that doesn’t care what anybody thinks and is just writing so freely, and then, later on, when you're like choosing the singles, or choosing what's going to be on the record, this other voice comes in and it's not a purist. It’s much more like, I want people to like this and I want to be loved. You’ve got the two different voices warring with each other, and it’s hard to get them to speak to each other, or know which voice should succeed.
I’m always mining from my own past in a way, and “Notting Hill” was really about mourning a place, but also memorializing it. I sold my apartment and never really said goodbye to it because I had a baby in America. And I, you know, fell in love in that apartment, had some of the worst nights of my life, some of my best. And then suddenly you outgrow somewhere so quickly and you’re having a baby in a different country, and it’s a walk-up and you’d never be able to get a stroller in there, and it's like full of everything in your 20s. It's giving its flowers to this place that raised me.
WATERHOUSE: That was a fun way to collaborate. When we got a response from Mick Fleetwood, I was kind of amazed. We struck an agreement that he would drum on “Morals” — I got like a billion videos of him in a studio in Hawaii playing all these incredible takes and I was just blown away that the whole thing was happening. And then I recorded a song for his record, that is with Amy Allen. He’s been working on a record for quite some time. I don’t know how much I’m allowed to say about it, but it was a very cool thing to have happened.
WATERHOUSE: She knows now what I do, it's funny. I was reading to her the other night and there was a “choose, what would your world be like? and where would you live? the mountains?" and we were kind of like picking things and there were a bunch of jobs and I said, “Which one does mommy do?” and she pointed to the woman with the guitar. So it’s kind of crazy. She's almost 2 1/2 now, so she’s really switched on, like knows what we’re doing, I can explain it to her much better. I’m just like in heaven with her, just enjoying her so much and I feel so deeply grateful that I get to bring her with me.
Suki Waterhouse poses for a portrait on Monday, June 29, 2026, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)
Suki Waterhouse poses for a portrait on Monday, June 29, 2026, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The United States and Iran each asserted Monday they controlled the Strait of Hormuz after a weekend of attacks stretching across the wider Middle East, further threatening any diplomacy to end the war.
The attacks, sparked by Iran striking a container ship Sunday in the strait off the coast of Oman, again underlined that the waterway that once saw a fifth of the world's traded crude oil and natural gas pass through it remained the key issue in negotiations. The narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf has seen shipping disrupted since the start of the war as Iran maintained a chokehold on it by attacking commercial vessels around it, intimidating shippers.
Iran and the U.S. are nearly at the midway point of the 60-day period of an interim deal that was supposed to set up talks for a permanent end to the war. Instead, it has devolved into a series of attacks over the strait and its future, worrying world leaders the Iran war fully could resume.
“A return to full-scale hostilities would have catastrophic consequences,” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement.
The U.S. military’s Central Command described its forces as hitting dozens of sites in the strikes Monday, including air defense systems, radar sites, missile and drone equipment and small boats.
“The Strait of Hormuz is a vital maritime corridor for global trade,” Central Command said. “Iran does not control it.”
Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, a key power center in the country's theocracy that controls its ballistic missile arsenal, sharply rejected America's statement.
“The Strait of Hormuz is our territory, and we will not allow a rogue and child-killing army from the other side of the world to continue its illegal interference in it,” the Guard said.
Missile alert sirens sounded twice Monday in Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, and Kuwait said it was intercepting hostile fire. There was no immediate word on damage in either country.
In Jordan, the kingdom's military said it shot down four Iranian missiles in an incident that "resulted in zero casualties or material damage.” Jordan also hosts U.S. military forces and aircraft.
Iranian state media acknowledged the latest attacks on its soil early Monday, describing explosions in several locations with at least one person being killed.
Iranian attacks on Sunday stretched Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan and even Oman — whose territorial waters with Iran make up the strait. Oman, which long has been an interlocutor between Tehran and the West, summoned an Iranian diplomat to criticize the attack.
Meanwhile Monday, a base belonging to the armed wing of the Kurdistan Freedom Party, an Iranian Kurdish opposition group based in Iraq’s semiautonomous northern Kurdistan region, came under drone attack. Rebaz Sharifi, commander of the Kurdistan Militia Corps, said the strikes targeted the group’s Chamshar base, without giving details on casualties or damage. No group immediately claimed responsibility.
The U.S. military early Sunday said it hit some 140 targets, including missile and drone launch sites, ammunition dumps, communication equipment and other sites — a far-heavier set of attacks than in two previous rounds of strikes in the last week.
“We bombed the hell out of them last night,” U.S. President Donald Trump told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Iran retaliated by attacking nations in the region hosting U.S. military forces, while insisting it alone must control the strait and potentially charge vessels for traveling through it.
“The era of one-sided deals is OVER,” Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s Parliament and a main negotiator, wrote. “We told you: keep your word or pay the price. Reality is knocking.”
Iran described the strait as being closed, while the U.S. military and Trump asserted that the strait remained open.
Iran’s chokehold on the strait, however, has loosened as the U.S. military provided support to vessels moving along a southern route hugging the coastline of Oman. That new route has angered Iran, which launched repeated attacks on ships using it.
Iran’s grip on the strait led to a global energy crisis, though oil prices have sharply dropped since wartime highs of $120 a barrel.
Trump suggested last week that the interim deal in the war was “over.” But mediators, including Pakistan, Qatar and Egypt, have continued efforts to reach a final agreement to end the war.
A regional official involved in mediation, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss talks, said efforts to shore up the ceasefire continued Sunday. Pakistan said its foreign minister spoke by phone with Iran’s top diplomat and urged “de-escalation” on both sides.
Iran’s new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, unseen since the war began, on Saturday vowed in his first statement since the funeral of his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that Iranians would avenge his killing.
Associated Press writers Munir Ahmed in Islamabad and Stella Martany in Irbil, Iraq, contributed to this report.
A group of people stands in shallow water as a cargo ship appears anchored in the Strait of Hormuz off Bandar Abbas, Iran, Tuesday, June 30, 2026. (Amirhosein Khorgooi/ISNA via AP)
Commercial vessels are seen in the Strait of Hormuz off Bandar Abbas, Iran, Tuesday, June 30, 2026. (Amirhosein Khorgooi/ISNA via AP)
