Trivia / S Club 7

• Acclaimed Flop: Their fourth album Seeing Double was their lowest selling, peaking at only #17 on the charts. It however was critically acclaimed.
• Acting for Two: Everyone in the movie since the entire band is cloned.
• Actor-Inspired Element: Hannah coloured the ends of her hair red shortly before they started filming the movie. Director Nigel Dick liked the look and had her keep it in.
• Actor-Shared Background: In the TV series, Tina's character was written to be a choreographer. Tina had been a dancer before joining the band, and choreographed a few of their routines — as she was shown doing in the series.
• Bad Export for You: Their third and fourth albums were never released in the US. Instead, songs from both Sunshine and Seeing Double were cobbled together into a combined album called Don't Stop Moving.
• Blooper: In the S Club Party Live tour of 2001, Rachel very obviously goofed when singing "You". Instead of singing the second verse, she sang the third verse twice.
• Break Up Breakout:
  • Rachel most prominently got two solo albums and a respectable career in music after the group disbanded. She has chosen to focus more on philanthropy and reality television, but remains a prominent media presence.
  • Hannah focused on acting, and had prominent roles in Agent Cody Banks 2 and Seed of Chucky, before securing the hit series Primeval.
• California Doubling: Miami 7 was, set in Miami, but mostly filmed in London. The exteriors were also filmed in Ft Lauderdale. LA 7 and Hollywood 7 were filmed on location in Los Angeles however.
• Career Resurrection:
  • Hannah's role in Primeval showed that she wouldn't just be remembered for being 'the cute one' in S Club.
  • Jon got to star in Les Misérables and Jersey Boys on the West End
• The Cast Show Off: The TV series and various live performances would find ways to have Tina show off her dancing.
• Contractual Obligation Project: Paul had already decided to leave after Sunshine was released. He still had to appear in Viva S Club, during which his departure happened on screen.
• Contractual Purity:
  • Averted. In 2001 the three boys in the band were caught with cannabis and arrested. Although they lost a couple of sponsors, their next single "Don't Stop Movin'" became their biggest hit and was voted Best Song of that year - so most people don't really remember the incident.
  • At the film's premiere, Tina caused quite a stir among Moral Guardians with the very revealing dress she wore.
  • Rachel tried to shake some of this off with her solo career. Her videos for "Sweet Dreams My LA Ex" and "Funky Dory" showed her in Hotter and Sexier clothing - and she embarked on a slightly racier image. Her next single "Some Girls" was incredibly sexually suggestive too. She has however said that she knows it's a fine line and, despite doing photoshoots with FHM, has opted to go for "sensual rather than overly sexy" - not wanting to embarrass her children or young fans.
  • This is partly the reason Jo faced such massive backlash over the Celebrity Big Brother scandal. Having been the face of a beloved children's band, and with a scandal-free public persona - fans were shocked at Jo's apparent racist bullying of Shilpa Shetty. Widely thought as the favourite to win the season, she ended up eliminated third.
  • Hannah also sought to distance herself from her squeaky-clean S Club image - with roles in Seed of Chucky and Primeval (which isn't family unfriendly but does feature her providing more overt Fanservice) and CASUAL+Y - where she plays a drug dealer.
• Costume Backlash:
  • For Bradley it was the video for "You're My Number One". He recalls the stylist turning up with a couple of outfits for everyone else but only the one for him. Also due to the video's Troubled Production, there wasn't time to braid his hair - so he had to wear a hat for the whole video.
  • The S Club Style magazine tying in with the release of the Seeing Double movie had an anecdote about how Jon disliked his spiky hair from the LA 7 era.
  • Hannah and Jo cringed when shown a clip of them accepting their BRIT Award at the beginning of the Sunshine era, regretting their short hair.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Jon eventually said he was sick of hearing "Reach" everywhere.
  • Jo initially seemed disdainful of some of her songs, calling them childish. But she seems to have come around in the 2020s, happily releasing solo covers on her YouTube channel during the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • Bradley hinted in a few interviews leading up to the movie that he wasn't happy about the TV series portraying him as The Ditz of the group.
  • Hannah doesn't hate her time in the group so much as she doesn't consider herself a singer, and would rather focus on acting. She's said she at least doesn't mind being known for S Club 7.
  • Everyone protested against "You" becoming a single. Feeling they had scored a real crossover hit with "Don't Stop Movin'" and moving away from their reputation as a bubblegum pop band for kids, following it up with such a saccharine song would be a step backwards.
  • Paul has been quite outspoken about how financially exploited the group were; despite making Simon Fuller billions for the use of their likenesses, they received barely any royalties from all the tie-in merchandise. He also later regretted leaving the band and missing out on filming the movie.
• Creator Cameo: For the sequence in the Seeing Double movie when the band are shooting a music video for their song "Dance", the director of the video is played by the film's actual director Nigel Dick. Who also directed some of S Club's other music videos.
• Cut Song: A song called "Rain" was played for about thirty seconds on an episode of Hollywood 7 but never got released as a single. Due to fans tweeting about hearing the full version, it was included on their updated Greatest Hits Album.
• Dawson Casting: Geoff Stults who plays Sam - the boy who wants Rachel to go to his high school prom - was 22.
• Died During Production: Paul died just weeks after a 2023 reunion tour was announced.
• Dye Hard:
  • Rachel added blonde into her hair around the time of "Have You Ever". As that was filmed after "You" but released before it, she goes back to having brown hair for that video.
  • Tina's hair became light brown around the time of "Alive".
  • Jon dyed his blond hair brown in the 2010s.
  • Hannah was briefly brunette in between Seasons 2 and 3 of Primeval.
• Fake Nationality: Seeing Double has a French character Susan Sealove played by Spanish actress Cristina Piaget.
• Friendship on the Set: Paul later commented on how surprised most other industry people were that everyone in the group got on very well, after being used to dealing with pop bands in which members weren't speaking to each other.
  “We were closer than many pop groups – people that used to work with us said: ‘Wow, you guys actually speak, you actually stay in the same room.’ Most of them don’t.”
• Funny Character, Boring Actor:
  • Jo in the TV series was portrayed as a fiery Lad Ette and aggressive badass. In interviews, Jo mentioned she was surprised at how she was hyped as the tough one, saying she was a lot meeker and shyer when not performing (a fact confirmed by seeing her out of character on S Club Go Wild).
  • Hannah was also portrayed as a Cloud Cuckoo Lander and the maddest of the girls. Out of character, she was less quirky and more soft-spoken.
• Hostility on the Set: The reason Paul stopped appearing with the 'S Club 3' - Bradley, Jo and later Tina - was because of tensions within the group. He also had some with Hannah, having taken a few potshots at her on Twitter after falling out with her during the 2015 reunion. However, they all reunited together in 2023, all on good terms again, Paul and Hannah specifically having a "clear the air" talk before announcing the reunion.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • Viva S Club was never released on DVD.
  • Anything relating to the band in the US, essentially, since very few Americans know who they are. It doesn't help that the TV show first aired on Fox Family Channel, since every original show that aired on that network is now owned by Disney, which has no interest in airing or releasing any of said programming.
• No Export for You: The version of "Alive" with Rachel's vocals instead of Jo's was never released as a single, but a bootleg version exists.
• On-Set Injury:
  • While filming the "Don't Stop Movin'" video, a chandelier fell on Tina, and she spent a good portion of the shoot picking fragments of glass out of her hair.
  • Jo was having back problems during the Seeing Double era, requiring the movie to write around them.
• Promoted Fanboy: Hannah was a huge fan of Eastenders and later joined the cast.
• Reality Subtext:
  • Jo attributes the emotional tone of "Have You Ever" to being influenced by her grandfather's passing right before they recorded it.
  • The movie has a couple of Take Thats to the Spice Girls, who were managed by Simon Fuller. He came up with the idea for S Club 7 the day after the Spice Girls fired him. Speaking of whom, the Spice Girls fired Simon Fuller because he was overworking and over-exposing them, especially during the chaotic production of Spice World. The members of S Club 7 would similarly quit after being exhausted from filming their TV show in America and being repeatedly forced to fly back to the UK for concerts.
  • The movie also opens with S Club exhausted from all the touring and being denied valuable time off because their manager is forcing them to work. This was pretty much paralleling how things were behind the scenes, and one of the reasons they split after the film was released was being burnt out from the constant touring.
  • And the movie opens with the group being dissatisfied with their manager. Around the time the film came out, the group were also facing legal battles with Simon Fuller for underpaying them (out of the €75 million fortune they had grossed as a band, they were only paid €150,000 a year for it). Notably he did not turn up to the film's premiere.
• Real Life Writes the Hairstyle: Seeing Double sees Hannah with red tips in her hair because Hannah Spearritt decided to do it for fun. Director Nigel Dick liked it and had her keep it for the film.
• Real Song Theme Tune/Replaced the Theme Tune: Each season had a different song as its opening theme. Miami 7 had "Bring It All Back", LA 7 had "Reach", Hollywood 7 had "You" and Viva S Club had "Alive".
• Romance on the Set: Hannah and Paul got together in 2001, when the group had been together for two years. They stayed together for five years. He later admitted that the kiss in Hollywood 7 happened first and the two were pushed into the relationship for publicity.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot: Jo was suffering from back problems during the Seeing Double album, requiring an alternate version of "Alive" to be performed with Rachel taking her vocals, and several plot points of The Movie to be written around it.
  • When the band escape the prison, they run all over town looking for Natalie's house. This creates a gag where Jo is the Only Sane Man who simply walks across the road to where the house is and gets there first.
  • When being chased by guard dogs through the maze, everyone else climbs over the fence, but Jo simply growls at the dogs and makes them back off.
  • The Jo clone is made to sit out during rehearsals to minimise the amount of dancing she has to do.
  • Jo also inexplicably isn't there in the shower scenes, which the film doesn't even try to Hand Wave.
  • The "Never Had A Dream Come True" sequence just has Jo sitting down to sing the song, while everyone else is more active.
• Short-Lived, Big Impact: The group lasted shorter than one would think. They're remembered as a hallmark of many 90s and early 2000s kids' childhoods. They only released four albums in total. But for four years they were everywhere - and their sitcom heavily influenced the formula later used by Glee and High School Musical.
• Sleeper Hit: "Bring It All Back" was their debut single, and Miami 7 was a very low budget TV show. The former got a shocking number one chart position, and the latter ended up with 90 million viewers worldwide in over a 100 different countries.
• Star-Derailing Role: Jo's appearance on Celebrity Big Brother. Her first solo single hadn't done well - but she was the favourite to win. It was also expected that winning the show would help get her career back on track. However due to perceived racist bullying of Indian actress Shilpa Shetty, Jo was the third eliminated - and faced massive backlash from the public. It was later revealed that she had been struggling financially before that - and that the money from winning Big Brother wouldn't have gone to charity like normal, but that Jo's house was in danger of being repossessed.
• Stock Footage: The concert scenes from Seeing Double are made up from stock footage of S Club's 2002 Carnival tour. If you look closely, you can see Paul on stage in wide shots. This is also why Tina assaulting her clone on stage is only heard through a Distant Reaction Shot.
• Technology Marches On: The cellphone Rachel had in "The Man From E.M.I." looked out of place if someone born in the mid-1990s and beyond was watching the program today, that includes the ringtone.
• Throw It In!: On their reunion tour, Jon decided to use a song he'd written when he was sixteen called "Hello Friend" - and performed it on stage with Jo. This was decided about three days before the first show.
• Troubled Production: Filming for Miami 7 was an extremely hectic shoot, due to the fast turnaround required. Thirteen episodes were filmed in three months, the group being shuttled back and forth between the UK for concerts and press, and the US for filming, which only intensified in LA and Hollywood 7, as both were filmed on location. Rachel admitted that they would film for two weeks straight and then get maybe one or two days off, and the filming days would last for fifteen hours. They were also ferociously underpaid compared to the money they were actually making - despite the group earning €90 million, the members themselves only got paid about €150,000 a year. All of them being so young also meant they weren't prepared for the intense media scrutiny and worldwide attention their sudden fame would get them - Paul ultimately leaving during Viva S Club mainly because he couldn't handle the fame.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The group was originally going to be called the 'Sugar Club' until S Club 7 stuck.
  • Three different members of the group were assembled and then abruptly dropped, before the line-up everyone is familiar with was decided.
  • Before she was chosen for this group, Tina was a member of Mis-Teeq (although at the time they were called 'Face 2 Face').
  • "Stronger" was meant to be released as a single off Sunshine, but Paul's departure led to it being cancelled. Videos for "Summertime Feeling" and "Show Me Your Colours" were filmed but never released.
  • An alternate version of "Alive" was filmed with Rachel on lead vocals instead of Jo, as the latter was suffering from back problems. This was the one usually performed live, but the single and album versions just had Jo's vocals.
  • Before the group decided to split up, "Dance" would have been the next single released off Seeing Double. In the movie the clones are even seen rehearsing a music video for it.
  • Paul claims he auditioned for I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! but was turned down for "not being famous enough".
  • Rachel's debut solo single "Sweet Dreams My LA Ex" was written for Britney Spears as a response to Justin Timberlake's "Cry Me a River". Britney turned it down for this reason.
• Word of Dante: Members of the group have said that the 'S' stands for 'Simon', after their manager. Others have said that it merely stands for 'seven'. Another theory is that it comes from Simon Fuller's success with the number nineteen - as 19 was the name of his management - and S is the nineteenth letter of the alphabet.