THE Knightswood girl about to step on stage to perform in the final of an Abba-themed reality show admits being rejected early in her career has instilled a drive in her.

Stevie Doc – whose family all hail from Clydebank – has made it to the final four of ITV’s Mamma Mia! I Have A Dream after weeks of fierce competition.

The popular show features the music of Swedish pop band Abba with 22-year-old Stevie bidding to take the iconic role of Sophie.

Now, ahead of Sunday’s grand finale, Stevie said it’s been hard to switch her mind off performing in front of a live audience in London’s Novello Theatre.

She said: “I am definitely excited, definitely nervous.

“I honestly did not expect to get to this point.

“Every week, in my head, I was like, 'right okay, just get to the next one, get to the next performance, let's see if I can get to the next week'.

“So even getting to this point now, I haven’t even thought about the fact we are now where we are, and it’s not another round in Corfu, there is no 'just get to the next week' because there is no next week.”

Stevie’s journey to musical theatre began when, at 15 at Knightswood Secondary, she and a pal decided to do the school show We Will Rock You.

Stevie got the lead part of Scaramouche and her performance got students at the nearby Dance School of Scotland urging her to audition for the school.

“I sat beside one of the dance school students in maths,” Stevie added.

“And every day he would ask, ‘Have you applied yet? Have you applied yet?’”

She did, but it wasn’t the dream start to a promising career she would have hoped.

Making it to the final stage of the acceptance process, she received news while on holiday in Tenerife that she hadn’t made the cut.

But Stevie now insists that heartbreak has made her stronger, equipping her for any troubled roads ahead.

She continued: “If I hadn’t had that rejection, I would never have been able to deal with rejection later on.

"I feel like, my first-ever experience of trying to do musical theatre was a build-up of, ‘oh my goodness, I could get this’ and then getting rejected.

“Honestly, I feel because of that, I knew how things could go in musical theatre, that I could really, really want something and that I might get rejected at the last minute.

“I also think that happening to me made me realise I really wanted to do it.”

Stevie lives in London these days and dad Gary said the family has been making Sunday nights – when Mamma Mia is aired on ITV – a weekly event, watching their girl excel on the TV.

He said: “Her sister is in Australia just now so she Zooms in. Stevie’s brother is on the couch with me, my brother, my niece – we’re all there watching it together.

“It’s been a weekly family event. I don’t know what we're going to do after this Sunday.”

Stevie tragically lost her mum when she was 13 years old and the singer, actor, dancer and performer credits her late mum for starting it all, thanks to her contagious love of music.

Stevie finished: “For me, my singing and my performance, I think it comes from my mum.

“We would dance and sing in the house.

“No matter what she was doing in the house, whether she was making dinner, or cleaning in the living room or doing the school run.

“My friends used to love getting in my mum’s car because you weren’t allowed to be in my mum’s car unless you were singing.

“She would force everyone to sing, and it wasn’t even like little humming along, you had to be belting the songs out.”