“The Queen favourite jewellery is grandmother's pearl earings - Daily Mail” plus 2 more |
- The Queen favourite jewellery is grandmother's pearl earings - Daily Mail
- Jennifer Lopez reveals she has not yet planned her wedding to Alex Rodriguez - Daily Mail
- Mary J. Blige on 'Mudbound' and Her Oscar Nominations - Vulture
| The Queen favourite jewellery is grandmother's pearl earings - Daily Mail Posted: 10 Jun 2016 12:00 AM PDT Round, lustrous button pearls, peeking out from beneath diamond studs. The Queen's earrings looked every bit as glorious when she wore them teamed with a beautiful mint green coat and hat at Cardiff University this week, as when she wore them half a century ago with a coral coat on a visit to the Isle of Wight in 1965. Given to the Queen as a wedding present by her beloved grandmother Queen Mary in 1947, these button pearls are at the heart of the Queen's personal jewellery collection, and have travelled with her all over the world - from New Zealand to the Seychelles, Nairobi to Mexico.  Given to the Queen as a wedding present by her beloved grandmother Queen Mary in 1947, these button pearls are at the heart of the Queen's personal jewellery collection The most versatile of all the Queen's jewels, they effortlessly blend into any surroundings. They have shone from turbans as she has been introduced to foreign monarchs in remote climes, gleamed from hard hats as she visited building sites and added the most discreet touch of countrywoman glamour under hats at rain-sodden horse meets. They looked just as appropriate when worn with a casual tweed skirt suit to cradle an infant Prince Edward in 1965, as they did 34 years later at his wedding to Sophie Rhys-Jones - accessorised with a lilac embroidered dress and matching fascinator. For while we tend to associate the Queen with her incredible Royal Collection of priceless tiaras, intricate brooches and dazzling diamond earrings, she is, like many Englishwomen of a certain age, most at ease in her pearls. The soft lustre of these jewels, which deepens the more they are worn, is flattering to older skin. And the Queen has only grown fonder of them as the years have passed. Pearls were the Queen's first 'serious' piece of jewellery. When her grandfather George V celebrated his Silver Jubilee in 1935, he gave both his granddaughters pearl necklaces. The then nine-year-old Princess Elizabeth received a necklace of three rows of perfectly matched pearls; Princess Margaret, four years younger, got a two-row version. Among the collection Elizabeth owns today are two stunning necklaces; the 18th-century Queen Anne pearl necklace and the 50-pearl Queen Caroline necklace, both given as a wedding present from her father. The Queen adores them all, perhaps because she did not own many other jewels as a young girl, so they remind her of her youth. One item she did have was a sapphire bracelet (later, her father King George VI gave her more sapphires, in the shape of a mid-19th-century set of necklace and earrings, set in gold, as a wedding present).  The Queen's earrings looked every bit as glorious when she wore them teamed with a beautiful mint green coat and hat at Cardiff University this week (pictured), as when she wore them half a century ago But when she became 21, jewels flooded in, mostly in the form of gifts from relatives. Pre-eminent among them was a pair of heavy diamond chandelier earrings that had been given to her mother Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother as a wedding present. These, by Cartier, are one of the few pieces of jewellery that the Queen owns that could be called Art Deco and, because of their weight, could be worn only with pierced ears, which she did not yet have. Soon, she had acquired many other pairs of earrings that could be worn only with pierced ears and so in 1951, just before her state visit to Canada, the 25-year-old Queen gave in to the inevitable and had her ears pierced. Jewellers all over the country reported a flood of enquiries about ear piercing. Thus began her love affair with pearls, both in her ears and draped around her neck. Her favourite necklace for quiet days is her single-strand version, one of the first pieces she acquired, and very much in the English tradition, matching the timeless elegance of her treasured pearl and diamond studs. When she was growing up, such strings were often given by well-heeled parents to their debutante daughters - hence the famous Country Life magazine's frontispiece, Girls In Pearls. At Balmoral, where - despite the holiday atmosphere so enjoyed by the Queen - dressing for dinner is de rigueur, the three-strand pearl necklace from her grandfather often appears. Its elegant simplicity could hardly be more different from the glittering collection of gems she is obliged to wear at state occasions. When Elizabeth became queen, she inherited the Royal Collection of jewels - gems that are the property of the Crown (though distinct from the Crown Jewels, ceremonial objects worn at the coronation ceremony and the State Opening of Parliament) so pass from reigning monarch to reigning monarch.  Queen Elizabeth wears the 1 million pounds pearl & diamond six-stranded necklace, a gift from the Amir when she paid a State Visit to Qatar in 1979 These were worn by the Queen Mother until Elizabeth II acceded the throne, when she began to wear items from it at once. For her Coronation she wore the set of diamond collet drop earrings and necklace made for Queen Victoria in 1858. These wonderful jewels come into their own on State occasions, when they are worn not so much as adornment, but as a statement of who she is. It is at such receptions she has a duty to be regal, and nothing represents this semi-theatrical quality more than jewellery. Early on in her reign she wore impressive pieces, most of them Georgian or early Victorian, that would have dominated anyone else. Most of them came from her grandmother, Queen Mary. As a glance at any picture of Queen Mary will show, her upright, idol-like figure was often so swathed in pearl necklaces and diamonds it was difficult to see the colour of her ankle-length dresses. By contrast, the Queen takes care to ensure her jewellery enhances rather than dominates her outfits. Brooches, usually worn on the left shoulder, are a favourite.  For her Coronation she wore the set of diamond collet drop earrings and necklace made for Queen Victoria in 1858. These wonderful jewels come into their own on State occasions, when they are worn not so much as adornment, but as a statement of who she is A selection that would go with an outfit are presented to her - usually three at a time - by her senior dresser and confidante Angela Kelly on special trays that once belonged to Queen Mary. 'The lace covers were hand-sewn by Queen Mary,' says Angela, 'and bear her own M monogram. We use lace handkerchiefs when presenting these brooches for the Queen to make her choice.' Adds Ingrid Seward, editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine: 'She always wears a brooch, even privately, when she puts on almost as much jewellery as she wears in public.' Among the brooches she favours are the Prince Albert sapphire brooch and the three diamond bow brooches Queen Victoria had made. Her great-grandmother Queen Alexandra and Queen Mary, both given to bedecking almost every square inch of their persons with gems, often wore all three of these diamond bow brooches together. Keeping these stones in mint condition means regular cleaning. Much of this is done by Angela Kelly. She says: 'I wear white cotton gloves and use a jeweller's cloth.' Sometimes, the Queen lends pieces to the royal ladies nearest to the throne, a considerable mark of favour. The Duchess of Cornwall has worn the huge Greville tiara (made by Boucheron in 1921 for the Hon. Mrs Greville, a famous Edwardian society hostess who left her collection of jewellery to the Queen Mother). Accompanying it were more glittering stones in the form of the Greville 'festoon' necklace - two diamond necklaces, one of three and one of two strands. Last year, the Queen lent the Duchess of Cambridge the Cambridge Lover's Knot tiara for a diplomatic reception at Buckingham Palace.  The soft lustre of these jewels, which deepens the more they are worn, is flattering to older skin. And the Queen has only grown fonder of them as the years have passed Then there is the maple leaf diamond brooch. The Duchess of Cornwall wore it in 2009 during her first tour of Canada. 'The Queen is so fond of her collection of private jewels that much of it travels with her, even on holiday,' says Ingrid Seward. 'The collection, looked after by her footman, is carried in a brown suitcase and has its own protective canvas cover across it.' In this case are kept seven sets of jewellery, a different set for every week day. At home in Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle, the jewellery she wears regularly is not kept in one of the boxes of battered leather lined with mushroom velvet that house her 'grand occasion' pieces. Instead, they live on trays that house stones according to colour — rubies, sapphires, emeralds. Yet there is one notable omission from the Queen's jewel box: she very seldom wears rings. Although she received a stunning square-cut diamond engagement ring with diamond side stones set in platinum from Prince Philip, the ring is barely seen as the Queen tends to cover her hands with gloves when in public. 'She doesn't much like her hands,' says Ingrid, 'and prefers not to draw attention to them.' But with so many other items of dazzling jewellery to choose from, who would notice?
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| Jennifer Lopez reveals she has not yet planned her wedding to Alex Rodriguez - Daily Mail Posted: 09 Apr 2019 12:00 AM PDT Jennifer Lopez has been making the press rounds in New York City this week to promote her new single Medicine with rapper French Montana. On Tuesday the 49-year-old star was at it again as she was seen in a long fur vest with a white tank top and black slacks. The former Fly Girl conducted several interviews, one of which was with KTU's Cubby and Carolina In The Morning! During her sit down, which will air on Wednesday, the beauty talked about her wedding plans with baseball vet Alex Rodriguez.  New look: Jennifer Lopez has been making the press rounds in New York City this week to promote her new single Medicine with rapper French Montana
Walk tall like Jennifer Lopez in platform boots by AlaiaJennifer Lopez can do it all: she can sing, dance and act. And now we can add walking in ridiculously high-heels to that list, too. The style icon stepped out in high-waisted strap trousers along with a fur gilet. She finished off the look with a pair of extremely vertiginous hiker boots by Alaia. Heeled hiker boots are one of footwear's major trends right now, and we particularly love the killer platform and luxe velvet material found on this pair. If you're a fan, too, click (right) to check them out at Barneys. They come with a sky-high price-tag to boot, so if you can't splash the cash, make sure you head to the edit below to get the look for less. ...NOW GET A PAIR LIKE IT FOR LESS    Go Jenny! On Tuesday the 49-year-old star was at it again as she was seen in a long fur vest, a white tank top, black slacks and Amavii Philip Polarized sunglasses  She became engaged to A-Rod in March Lopez and Rodriguez became engaged in March during a vacation in the Bahamas as the former baseball star presented the singer with a diamond ring that is estimated to be 15 carats and cost $5m. But the siren revealed to Cubby and Carolina that she has not yet started planning her wedding because they are both too busy. And they don't even have a wedding date in mind. 'We haven't started planning yet, you know, we just got engaged, and then right afterwards we started working right away and we're working the rest of the year so I don't know, I don't know what's going to happen,' said the Bronx native.  Happy: The star conducted several interviews, one of which was with WKTU's Cubby and Carolina In The Morning!  Boy talk: During her sit down, which will air on Wednesday, the beauty talked about her wedding plans with baseball vet Alex Rodriguez   Zero plans: 'We haven't started planning yet, you know, we just got engaged, and then right afterwards we started working right away and we're working the rest of the year so I don't know, I don't know what's going to happen,' said the Bronx native 'We haven't decided if we're going to squeeze it in somewhere or if we're going to wait so you know... I really don't know yet.... I'm not lying right now.' Her schedule includes shooting the stripper drama Hustlers with Cardi B then going on her summer It's My Party tour to celebrate turning 50-years-old. As far as Hustlers, the Jenny From The Block singer said the role intimidates her. 'It's actually very scary for me,' began the cover girl.  Ready to dance: Her schedule includes shooting the stripper drama Hustlers; here is a look at Lopez in character 'It's a nightmare thinking about being up there. I'm exposing myself let's say in a way, an emotionally and physically more than I've ever done in a movie. 'And I've done love scenes and this and that whatever but not like I was up there like that. 'And I take sexy pictures and all that kind of stuff, I've done videos that are very sexy, it's not that but this is a different mentality and so as an actress it's a scary... for me it's not scary, it just makes me nervous.'   Le look: During her day of press Jennifer wore her hair long and straight with several highlights. Lopez carried a small alligator Hermes Birkin purse worth over $25,000  Bling it on baby: She also had on her large diamond engagement ring from Alex as well as the Cartier panther ring he gave her when they were dating  More to see: Jenny often has short hair but when she wants to she can make it very long with the help of clip ins She will play Ramona who is based on the real-life story of Samantha Barbash, a con-woman who led a ring that drugged rich clients and scammed them out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Her role calls for her to strip on stage. Jennifer has already shared an image of herself in character where she was in a pink bikini with a belly piercing. Jennifer also revealed that Cardi - who has admitted to drugging clients when she worked as a stripper before fame hit - will not be shooting her scenes until 'the end of the month.'  More to talk about: Later the Wedding Planner actress was also seen on the Elvis Duran Z100 Morning Show at the Z100 Studio  Her pal: The Grammy favorite was seen with her arm around Elvis who wore all black  They all showed! (L to R) Elvis Duran, Medha Gandhi, Lopez, Danielle Monaro and Skeery Jones So far Lopez has been shooting several scenes in New York with Crazy Rich Asians star Constance Wu. After she is done filming Hustlers - which will be released in 2020 - the star will head out on her summer tour named It's My Party. It is scheduled to begin on June 7, 2019, in Inglewood, California and end on July 26, 2019, in Miami, Florida.  Off she goes: Jenny left the studios, fur jacket back on   Snap! She was sure to stop and take selfies with her devoted fans  Off she goes: The star commanded attention as she headed to her waiting car There will be a total of 29 shows in Canada and the United States. And J-Lo said that her two children Max and Emme, aged 11, she had with Marc Anthony will show up as will A-Rod. 'Yea of course, the kids will probably be with me the whole time,' said the Second Act star.   Jenny round the block: She headed off across the pavement after greeting her fans  Swish: Jennifer managed to retain her cool, composed demeanor throughout 'Alex has Sunday night baseball so he'll be in and out. He said, "I'm definitely at opening night, I'm definitely at closing night, in between we'll figure it out."' She was also on the Elvis Duran show where she talked her tour. 'It's a terrifying thing and also an excited thing,' she said. 'I just finished my kind of three year stint in Vegas where I did shows often.  Star quality: The actress had all eyes on her as she strutted along the concrete 'This is a version of this, it's a birthday party theme. I am going to be 50. I don't feel like that, I feel like I'm 28.' She was asked if she feels she has to work all the time to keep up. 'No I used to be that way and then I hit the wall, like the 2nd, 3rd time I hit a wall, I though it's going to be unhealthy if I keep this up,' she confessed. But she said she got more balanced when she had her kids. Then, oddly, the opportunities got better so she was tempted to do more. 'It never gets old to me,' she said. 'It's always fresh, it's always new, there is always something new to do... I am always trying to create something that moves people.'  New clip: The music video for Medicine was released on Monday and is currently at #1  That's our Jenny Lo: The singer also made sure to flash her famous backside in the video During her day of press Jennifer wore her hair long and stick straight with several highlights. She also had on her large diamond engagement ring from Alex as well as the Cartier panther ring he gave her when they were dating. Large hoops earrings also gave her a more urban vibe. She carried a $25,000 Hermes alligator purse and wore six inch high platform boots. The music video for Medicine was released on Monday and is currently at #1 on iTunes.
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| Mary J. Blige on 'Mudbound' and Her Oscar Nominations - Vulture Posted: 04 Feb 2018 12:00 AM PST  The first time Mary J. Blige saw herself onscreen in Mudbound, it made her cry. She'd become someone else, someone unrecognizable, yet — and she had to be told this at first — someone undeniably beautiful: Florence Jackson, a sharecropper's wife in Jim Crow Mississippi who navigated the narrow path allowed for her life, seeing much but saying little. "The great surprise at Sundance was that people didn't know it was her until the credits rolled," says the film's director, Dee Rees. And now Blige is up for an Academy Award for the portrayal, so different from that other character she's spent 25 years creating and, in a way, hiding inside: the bling-armored, blonde-wigged, Grammy-laden "Queen of Hip-Hop Soul." "I'm used to my nails now, and I'm addicted to lashes," says Blige when we meet downstairs at her blandly luxurious Westwood high-rise — inside, all buttery tones, the polished tentacles of a Dale Chihuly chandelier floating above the lobby; outside, a fellow tenant's Maserati SUV idling in the porte cochère. She hadn't wanted to have me up to her apartment, so when I arrived, her REAL LOVE–hoodie-clad assistant led me through the building's refrigerated wine cellar to what the concierge referred to as the "card room" for our conversation. "I'm Mary J. Blige. I mean, like, this is what I do. I wear wigs, I wear bob wigs, and I had to completely strip down to my own natural hair texture, which I've always been afraid of. Dee stripped me down all the way to what I truly am, and people were complimenting me. People were saying how beautiful I was. I didn't know I was that beautiful for real. You understand what I'm saying? I didn't know that." Blige is famous, but famous has never made up for anybody's feeling of, as she once put it, "not being worth anything." That's her struggle, and because that is the struggle for many of us, it's her bond with us, no matter how famous she's become. Even people who grew up in far less dispiriting circumstances than she did — her father ran off; she was raised in Yonkers just as crack ravaged the community; a family friend molested her — understand that feeling, or have experienced some version of it. One of the revelations for Blige in making Mudbound was how much her R&B-star persona cosseted her, even as she sang — bled — achingly confessional songs, coming back again and again to the same lesson, the need to love yourself to be ready and able to love someone else. "If I'm onstage every single night, it can't just be for my fans. It obviously is for me, too," Blige says. Her most enduring hits — "Real Love," "Family Affair," "No More Drama" — accompany our lives, whether or not we're one of the millions who've bought a Blige album or exorcised our pain at one of her exultant concerts where, Rees says admiringly, "she's reliving experiences." "I'm going to feel it like it was the first day," Blige says. "I'm going to relive 'No More Drama.' I don't have a choice. These things really happen, so they just turn up again. And if it's healing for someone else, it's therapy for someone else, it'll be therapy for me as well." Rees knew Blige's music, of course, but most of her acting was confined to roles in which she more or less played her pop self — like her turn as Viola Davis's straight-talking hairdresser-confidante in How to Get Away With Murder (for the record, Blige confirms that, yes, she knew how to "sew in" a weave as she did on the show). Rees sent Blige the script for Mudbound after seeing her play Evillene, the Wicked Witch of the West, on The Wiz Live! in 2015, impressed by her willingness to throw herself into that character on live television. It was a gamble for Rees. The Mudbound shoot was arduous — they filmed, with a tight budget, in the middle of the Louisiana summer. But Blige wasn't the diva she could have been. She worked hard, knew everybody's lines as well as her own, and became Florence so much that, Rees says, extras didn't know she was Mary J. Blige. "She had this vulnerability and reserve," Rees says. "She could feel much and withhold much. There were just moments of stillness and her silences — this dark commentary she could say under her breath. A lot of actors tend to be very aware of their surroundings. She would just go perfectly still, and she was in her head. Just sitting, thinking." "I hate pain, but I know how to deal with it," Blige elaborates. "To do the assignment God has sent me to do, I have to live certain things. And unfortunately I'm constantly living it. You understand what I'm saying? It's like trying to talk to a prison class, but you've never been to prison." She's done her time with cocaine and alcohol troubles, money troubles, tax troubles. Much of which, judging from her lyrics and the facts of her life as she's related them over the years, hinge on her inability to find a man who is trustworthy. She was on the verge of filing for divorce from her husband and manager, Kendu Isaacs, during the filming of Mudbound, but didn't tell anyone on set. "It wasn't anybody's business," Blige says. "I just kept it and gave it all to Florence." Today, when I meet her, Blige is wearing a blue Adidas tracksuit with red stripes, a DSquared baseball cap ("Their clothes are so hot. Her lack of instinct for femmed-up sexiness is only one of many ways she's an unusual pop star. She was never going to be Whitney or Mariah, her contemporaries on the charts. She was a tomboy with born-and-bred-in-the-projects hip-hop authenticity — something her first producer, the then-19-year-old Sean "Puffy" Combs, recognized as soon as he met her. He'd show her how to wear that baseball cap turned backward. "What I loved about Puff is he immediately saw — I mean, instead of a tight dress, he put a baggy Armani suit on me with some Teflon boots. I wore a miniskirt sometimes, a pleated miniskirt, but I wore boots with it. But I hated skirts, I hated dresses, because I sit like this" — she leans forward, elbows on knees, legs spread. "I can't sit like that with a miniskirt on." Her look and demeanor were also about "survival," Blige says. "I worked with a lot of men and grew up around a lot of men. I didn't want them to look at me like that. I kind of sat like them, talked like them, even subconsciously, so they wouldn't look at me like I'm a girl." Not that the tomboy didn't eventually evolve into something more glamorous. "It took me a long time. I didn't want to wear lipstick and all this stuff," she says. "I'd fight not to wear these little shorts [in videos], and I'd end up wearing them and the video would be great. And you'd be like, Okay, that's not bad, and you start to grow." It's a kind of dueling persona she has: In the video she did of the remix of "Love Yourself" last summer, with A$AP Rocky, half the time she's a badass hidden behind mirrored sunglasses crouching in the open door of a swank vintage Lincoln, and then she's singing in a fancy dress in front of a chandelier. You can guess which pose feels more natural. She still has to remind herself not to slouch: "I'm just learning how to stand up straight, and I have to remember to posture myself straight on the red carpet," she says. Or, as she demonstrates, to pull her knees together. Blige grew up in New York, but her family, like the one in Mudbound, is from the South, and as a child she'd visit her grandmother in the summer at her farm in Georgia. "I always forget to mention that my dad is a Vietnam vet, and my mom and my dad moved from the South to New York for a better life," she says. "So by the time I was born, he was out of Vietnam, but he wasn't all the way there. I guess him leaving us at an early age was a part of him wanting to escape a lot of things." After her father left, her mother supported the family, working long hours as a nurse, while Mary and an older sister knocked around a housing project in which, Blige once told Oprah, "there was a lot of 'You better get upstairs' if you were by yourself because if somebody catch you in the hallway you could end up raped or something." It was the molestation that gutted her the most, though, she says. To cope, she copped an obstinate attitude in elementary school, telling her principal that she got into trouble "because I don't take no shit." It was something that she'd heard her mother say, but, as an adult, she'd eventually realize that her reflexive defiance was becoming corrosive. The one thing that made her forget about her problems was music. At 7, she won a talent contest, singing Aretha Franklin. Her talent solved her old problems but soon created new ones. She'd recorded herself performing Anita Baker at the mall when she was 17, and her mother's boyfriend passed on the tape to a co-worker at his Tarrytown car plant who'd been signed with Uptown Records. That landed her a deal with the label, and she began working with Combs — who pushed her hard, she says. "I was never as ambitious as he is. He wanted it so much more. And so because he would push, I would push. I was a dreamer and wanted things, but I never was as ambitious as Puff." It's about this time in our conversation when I realize I'm avoiding sustained eye contact with Blige. There's something nakedly unprotected about her gaze that's unsettling. For someone who has been a megacelebrity for as long as she has, Blige seems surprisingly unschooled in the blithe self-salesmanship at which showbiz people excel. Watch clips of her on The Wendy Williams Show, or even as the guest of her obvious admirer Tracee Ellis Ross, subbing for Jimmy Kimmel, and she's palpably nervous. In person, she's wary and introverted, occasionally running her manicured nails together as if worried where this conversation might go. "I'm always thinking about, What am I going to say if this person just disrespects me?" she says. "How am I going to handle it? Because back in the day, I didn't handle it well. I just cursed you out completely, like right out of the gate. But now I think about what I say because then the interview was, 'Mary cursed me out. She's a bitch, she's this, da, da, da.' " When success came — and it came quickly, starting with her debut, What's the 411?, in 1992 — Blige didn't know how to handle it, or herself. "I had money, and I had access to all the things that I used to tear my life down," she says. "I went crazy. I could get any drug, anything, at any moment." She embarked on a volatile relationship with Cedric "K-Ci" Hailey, of the group Jodeci — they even toured together, with Blige being none too pleased by the attention young women gave him. It didn't last. By the early aughts, Blige says she was "very depressed, and I just felt like I wanted to check out." And then she met Isaacs. They married in 2003, and he became her manager. In a 2011 Behind the Music interview, she credited him with saving her from being a "slumbucket alcoholic" and declared that, thanks to him, she "felt safe for the first time. I had never felt truly loved." Fast-forward five years to when that relationship ended in a blaze of infidelity — Blige has called the other woman "my Becky with the good hair" — and financial mismanagement, at least according to the singer's side of the story. According to a TMZ report last fall, Blige, as part of her divorce negotiations, asserted that she was deeply in debt and owed millions of dollars to the IRS. Isaacs, for his part, has contended that he's been left traumatized and unemployable. No doubt to the satisfaction of fans who never quite got onboard with Blige's sunnier, post-marriage songs, she put all her fury and disillusionment with her former husband into the album she released last year, Strength of a Woman: "You must have lost it, nigga, you won't get a dime / But all you're gonna get, too bad, I can't get back my time / Wasted all this time," she sings on "Set Me Free," with the chorus: "There's a special place in hell for you / You gon' pay for what you did to me." "For me to agree to put something out in the universe like that, I was angry," Blige admits upon reflection. "And I was just hurt … hurt, hurt, hurt, pissed, pissed, pissed, been scorned, scorned, scorned. Then bitter. When the bitter came, I was like, Oh, no. I'm not going to let this destroy me." ("I gotta keep myself going, I gotta keep the light going, because you can end up Kurt Cobain–ing out here," as she told radio personality Angie Martinez in an interview timed to the record release.) A major takeaway from her divorce is that Mary J. Blige Inc. In many ways, these ought to be the best of times for Blige. The morning of her birthday, her star was unveiled on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Combs was there, telling a story about "picking her up from the projects" in his Volkswagen Rabbit and how "we would just dream. Man, we wanted to be somebody … shake up the world." And they did. Her friend the longtime music executive Jimmy Iovine, who currently works for Apple, was there too, as he's always been, "whether I was selling records or not," Blige says. He put her in that Apple Music ad with Kerry Washington and Taraji P. Henson, another friend she met years back at the Grammys; he let her live in his Malibu home after the split with Isaacs left Blige, in her words, "homeless." He also gave her a talk show on Apple's streaming service, and in 2016, she interviewed Hillary Clinton, serenading her with Bruce Springsteen's song about police brutality, "American Skin (41 Shots)." But now she's safely ensconced in her high-rise, with her career headed in an unexpectedly exciting direction. In addition to the Best Supporting Actress nomination, she and Raphael Saadiq are up for an Oscar for best song, "Mighty River," which plays over the closing credits of Mudbound. She's started a TV-production company, and last fall Fox signed on to develop 8 Count, a drama set in the "cutthroat music/dance world." The role of Florence was the real life-changer, she says, opening lots of new options. "Everyone I see, they say, 'Oh, my God, you were so great. I didn't know.' They didn't know I had whatever they're seeing in me; they didn't know I could pull it off. To be quite honest, I didn't even know I did that good." She'd moved out to L.A. from New Jersey three years ago to be part of Hollywood, though she misses her family back east. L.A. isn't quite her thing: "This is very slow. Sometimes you're just sitting around like, Oh, this is boring," she notes. "This is the next chapter," she says, brightening. "This is why I'm just so humbled and grateful, because I've been praying for this and asking for this and it's here, outside of all this foolishness that's happening right now." To wit, it was reported in "Page Six" and elsewhere that she had been ordered to pay her ex $30,000 a month, and he's asked for more. They're slated to go to court in March. But she didn't want to go into all of that with me. She's talked enough about it. Maybe quiet is now the way to go for her. After all, Blige built Florence out of silences, something she learned growing up, before she — Mary J. Blige — found her voice. "The neighborhood was really tough," she remembers. "Everything we saw, we couldn't say — so that was in me. My mother said whatever she wanted, but my grandmother was just a very reserved woman, very reserved but very powerful. Because you can end up in trouble if you said too much. I mean, Dee saw that. That's my personality." Throughout the film, Blige "just channeled" her grandmother, "the way she stood like this all the time," she says, placing her hand on her lower back, arm akimbo. And the scene where Florence breaks a chicken's neck for dinner? "Yeah, that was real. I saw that as a kid. My grandparents, my aunts and them, they was no joke. They killed chickens with their hands, knives." Mudbound — which you can stream on Netflix — is a serious film with an at least somewhat hopeful ending. "What I loved about the story is that everybody" —Florence's family, as well as the white family whose land they worked as sharecroppers — "realized that they were pretty much in the same hole," she says. "Love is the silver lining of the movie." But the lessons of mutual respect in the film are hard-won, to say the least, and not shared by everyone. "The Ku Klux Klan just didn't get the memo," she observes drolly. But as Rees notes, some forms of racism the film depicts are more subtle and pernicious. Florence realizes that she is viewed, on some essential level, by the white family as a tool that doesn't exist outside of accommodating their needs. As Rees points out, racism doesn't always take the form of the KKK. You just have to think that the other people aren't fully like you. None of which is news to Blige, of course. I ask her what she learned about herself playing Florence. "I learned that I'm a really powerful woman. I mean, other than just being Mary J. Blige, the superstar, I learned that I'm powerful because I don't have to say much to be heard." Besides, despite her reputation for confessionalism, she slyly tells me she's always in control of the information. It may seem like she's baring it all, "but the things that I don't want people to know, you will never know." Photos by Radka Leitmeritz Styling by Law Roach for TheOnly.Agency Makeup by Sir John for L'Oréal Paris Hair by Larry Sims at Forward Artists for Smooth 'n Shine *This article appears in the February 5, 2018, issue of New York Magazine. |
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