Essence (July 2000)

THE SEASON
OF HER CONTENT

The exquisite love affair of Vanessa L. Williams and her new husband, Rick Fox

by Joan Morgan-Murray

On this slightly overcast, cold March day, a decidedly domestic scene plays in the lounge of Washington, D.C.´s Four Seasons Hotel. Against a backdrop of professional basketball players, business-suited power brokers, Lycra-clad hoop hoochies and autograph hounds, an arrestingly beautiful Black woman and her equally handsome husband momentarily engage in the cycle of discussion and compromise that typifies marriage. Seemingly satisfied with the outcome, they lean in and share a brief, tender kiss. Across the room, a chubby, painfully adolescent White kid gawks in utter disbelief. Shouting her name over the crowd, he brings abrupt end to this quiet exchange of intimacies: "Vanessa Williams!" he booms nervously. "Can I get your autograph?"

Distance and the oblivion of your youth prevent him from seeing the momentary flash of ire in her fiery blue-green eyes or the quick, deep breath she draws to retain her composure. Years of celebrity and her recent marriage to Los Angeles Laker Rick Fox have made Vanessa L. Williams well aware that private moments in the public domain are damn near impossible. She sighs softly and decides to give the teenager the autograph. But before she can reach for his pen, a firm, gentle voice interjects on her behalf. "Please," Fox tells him. "It´s ´Ms. Williams, may I have your autograph, please?´ I want you to remember, young man, that please goes a long way in this world." Properly chastised and visibly embarrassed, the kid parrots, "Ms. Williams, may I please have your autograph?" and remembers to thank her accordingly.

While many of the sports fans in that lobby may have dismissed the exchange as a simple by-product of Fox´s small-town Caribbean upbringing and a consequent predilection for good manners, every woman within earshot read the subtext and smiled. We knew how Rick was putting it down. "This is my wife," he was saying, "Address her with respect and recognize that she´s got back in this world."

This is not imply that Vanessa L. Williams is, in any way, a woman incapable of fighting her own battles. At 20, when the emergence of nude photographs forced Williams to give up her reign as Miss America (she was the first African-American woman ever to win the title), there were those who mistakenly thought she was down for the count. Instead she came back with a vengeance. Sixteen years later, the critically acclaimed actress and recording star has sold 4 million albums worldwide, garnered nine Grammy nominations and logged numerous film and television performances.

Her roles in Soul Food, Hoodlum, Stomping at the Savoy and The Jacksons: An American Dream earned her a special place in Black folks' hearts (and an NAACP Image Award to boot). The greater coup d'état, however, has been Williams's ability to work consistently in a business known for its paucity of quality roles for Black actresses; she has often snagged roles traditionally reserved for Whites and the occasional Latina (Kiss of the Spiderwoman, Dance With Me, The Odyssey, Eraser, Don Quixote)-a feat almost unheard of in Hollywood. She attributes this diversity of roles to a combination of talent, luck and the "creativity and guts of the producer or director." Her longevity, however; can be credited partially to an unwavering professionalism and a healthy dose of fearlessness. "I'm not afraid to attempt anything, because chances are I've done it already," Williams says. "I'm not afraid to get dirty, and I never run from any kind of challenge."

Earlier this year Williams executive-produced her first project for Lifetime Television, which aired in January The Courage to Love is a historical dramatization of the life of Henriette Delille, a slave-owning quadroon who rejected her life of privilege, became a nun and established the first African-American order in the 1800's. Costarring with Samuel L. Jackson in John Singleton's remake of the seventies Blaxploitation classic Shaft, she also rose to the challenge of making an action film while pregnant - a feat she takes in stride. "It was a very easy thing for me to do," she chuckles matter-of-factly. "I was in my first trimester; and I definitely had to work with a growing waistline, but that didn't stop me from being able to shoot a gun outside the window of a car."

Not all of her recent challenges have been professional. In the last four years, Williams, 36, went through a difficult divorce, remarried, got pregnant and inherited a whole new family. After a whirlwind romance, Williams married 30-year-old Rick Fox last September. When we meet them, they are awaiting their first child, a girl, scheduled to arrive in May. She'll be Vanessa's fourth (her first three, Melanie, 12, Jillian, 11, and Devin, 7, are from her previous marriage) and Fox's second (his 5-year-old son, Kyle, is from a previous relationship). Older; wiser and very much in control of her life and career; Williams is preparing for her next act with more confidence than ever. "When I got married at 23 [to Ramon Hervey], it was about the dress, the production, the happily-ever-after;" she says. "Then you realize that marriage is a lot of work and sacrifice. It's a day-to-day thing. I was married for ten years. I brought all of that experience into my new marriage."

The Long Road Back
Williams certainly looks like she's in the season of her content. Just ask anybody who's seen her these days: fully pregnant and rocking leather Liz Lange pants at a Nets-Lakers game, presenting at the Oscars and looking like a vision, relaxing barefaced and beautiful in her Chappaqua, New York, home - Vanessa L. Williams is positively aglow. And judging from the way she and Fox are beaming at each other here in the lobby of the Four Seasons, she is also a woman who is very much in love.

Witnessing Williams in the throes of domestic bliss, it's hard to imagine that just two years ago she was, to use her words, seriously "stuck in the valley." For reasons she still finds "too personal and painful" to discuss, Williams made the hard decision to end her ten-year marriage to Hervey, the father of her first three children and her ex-manager; the architect of much of Williams's early success. When they met in 1985 Hervey was the publicist hired to do damage control when Williams decided to resign as Miss America. He was the attractive older knight - Williams was 22 and Hervey was 36 - coming to Williams's professional rescue. The relationship gradually shifted from professional to personal, and they married. Like most newlyweds, she expected marriage to last forever. She was devastated when it didn't. "Divorce is one of the most courageous and hardest things I think anyone can go through," she says, still visibly pained by the topic. "It was a major death for me."

While she won't go into much detail, Williams does say that she changed a great deal during the course of the marriage. "I'm a much different person at 36 than I was at 22. I'm much more confident about what I want and what I need to say - especially in terms of relationships," she says. "I dont let things linger. I'm much more forthright about my feelings and needs." Gone are the days when she used to "walk on pins and needles, trying to figure out if someone was mad at me, wondering what I had done, if something had happened."

Williams was especially worried about how the divorce would affect their three children. She admits that, as much as she tried to shelter them, the children still witnessed periods of crisis and pain. "I think it was hardest on my eldest daughter, Melanie, who was 8 or 9 at the time and the most sensitive to what was going on," she says. "She was angry and had a difficult time understanding." Williams stresses that the family's healing "didn't happen overnight; it was a process." In the four years since Williams and Hervey have been apart, they've built a friendship that allows them each to be an active and positive presence in their children's lives. Hervey lives in the next town over the two split custody during the week, and together they try to be present at childhood events. That includes good stuff like confirmations, birthday parties and sports outings, and not-so-great stuff like falls, cuts and visits to the emergency room. "Ramon has turned out to be a fantastic father," she says. "He completely rose to the occasion, and we've done a great job of being friends - civil and working together. He has met Rick several times, and he's conveyed to the kids that he likes him. That really does help. You can see the kids are happy and well-adjusted."

Still, she admits that the journey from her divorce to her current state was not at all an easy one. Williams credits her healing to a combination of things, among them spiritual counseling from her pastor, a lot of reading (Iyanla Vanzant's The Value in the Valley was a favorite), writing in her journal and, above all, "time, forgiveness and restored hope." "I viewed my divorce as a failure, so I was skeptical about whether marriage could work," she says. "It took a while to be brave enough to believe again."

And it took a good man to make her a believer.

'Too good to be true...'
Ask Rick Fox how he met his wife, and his lips curl into an easy smile and his already soft voice drops to an almost reverent whisper. "Do you know how people say you can conjure things up in your mind and make them happen?" he asks rhetorically. "Sometimes I wonder if I conjured this up."

When Fox was growing up in the Bahamas, his entire childhood "revolved around school, family, sun, sand and sea - the things that other people come to visit," he says. In 1984 an exchange program brought 14-year-old Fox to Warsaw, Indiana. A dizzying array of newness and excess - umpteen televisions, malls, multiplex movies and his small-time fame as a local baller - made the teenage island boy feel like his life was "moving at warp speed."

"What I came from," he explains, "was so deeply rooted in family, God and church. It was like stepping into a totally different environment, and I wasn't really comfortable in it." Ironically, one of his stabilizing influences was the recording star Vanessa L. Williams. Following her career over the years, he became increasingly impressed not only by her good looks and talent but also the elegant, self-possessed way she carried herself. "She was my first representation of a Black American woman," he says. "I never thought I might marry her one day. I was really just a fan who appreciated her music and her work." Years later, when NBA fame and fortune (Fox's six-year contract with the Lakers is a reported $25 million), small acting roles (he's appeared in several movies and television shows) and Fox's killer looks exposed him to plenty of women - hoop hoochies, gold diggers and other opportunists who seriously contradicted the image he cherished - Vanessa still bore the standard. "She was a strong, beautiful American woman," he says. "I thought that if that's what America had to offer, I hoped someday to marry someone like that." If he was ever lucky enough to meet her, he thought, he intended to tell her just that.

He got his chance in 1998 at a book party they were both attending for celebrity makeup artist Sam Fine. The exchange was so brief Fox barely got in a hello. He got another chance four months later, when his brother, Aaron Fox, long aware of his brother's lifelong crush, called Williams's assistant and invited her to Fox's birthday party in Los Angeles. Williams (who was in town for a premiere) was all set for a night of salsa dancing with her girls. "I only had time for a hello and one quick glass of champagne. Then we were gone," Williams recalls, chuckling at the memory. Still, it was long enough to make an impression; Fox sent her three dozen pink and white roses. When Fox asked her for the digits, she said no, but she did invite him to the premiere of her movie Dance With Me. Not that he got to see much of her; Williams was too busy dancing with everyone in the cast to really give him much attention, but she ended the night with a kiss that, according to her husband, made him forget where he was. "I literally froze," he says. "It was just a peck - she was out the door and into her limousine - but when her lips hit my lips I knew there was something mutual going on."

The two stayed in touch and enjoyed several pleasant phone conversations. But Vanessa wasn't at all sure she wanted things to progress romantically. Rick had a few things working against him. For starters, when it came to potential lovers, fans and professional athletes ranked high on her list of don't's. More significant, lingering flink from her divorce and the six-year age difference between her and Fox triggered a host of insecurities.

"It stirred up a lot of things I'd been feeling," she says. "Am I aging? Am I still appealing? Am I still youthful, feminine? What are people going to think? All those things." Tell her this is a little unbelievable coming from a woman who was twice voted one of the most beautiful women in the world by two international magazines and she simply shrugs it off. "I really don't think of myself as any great beauty," she says matter-of-factly. "I live in the same town I grew up in. There aren't too many Black folks here, so I was not a standout growing up. I didn't even go to my prom.

While age was the last thing on Fox's mind, he, too, had his doubts. "In the short time I'd spent with her, she had surpassed all my expectations, but I was struggling with whether I was just an infatuated fan or whether there was really something there," he says.

Things progressed quickly, and during the next four months they were inseparable. As fate would have it, the NBA lockout that year gave them time to take two vacations, spend Christmas together and meet each other's families. Surprisingly, Williams says, "There wasn't a whole lot of tension. Ramon has met Rick several times and he likes him. Rick's son, Kyle, is 5 and Devin is 7, and they're buds. It really couldn't get any better than it is when it comes to everyone's getting along."

While the results were blissful, Williams was still reluctant to fully commit herself to the relationship. With the new season approaching, she and Fox would be apart nine months of the year, and she had no intention of moving back to Los Angeles. For the sake of their family, Williams and Hervey had eschewed Hollywood living several years before and had moved, kids in tow, to Chappaqua. They had put the kids in public school and bought a house ten minutes away from her parents.

To make matters worse, seven months into the relationship, Fox - who was being courted heavily by the New York Knicks - cut negotiations short to sign a six-year multimillion-dollar contract with the Lakers. He knew the decision would have ramifications. "I could feel her withdrawing, and I knew what she was going through," says Fox, whose breakup with his previous girlfriend had left him so weary and wary he didn't date for a year.

"We'd both been through relationships that had failed," he says. "I knew we were jaded, but I thought, just maybe, we could break these walls down together."

"It was scary," Williams reflects. "I knew he had all the makings of Mr. Right: He was accepting, encouraging, loving, complimentary and gorgeous. It felt too good to be true, and I didn't want to be hurt anymore. But it's the James Joyce quote, you know? 'First you feel and then you fall.' You can't go into a relationship and be l00-percent open if you're afraid. You can't be yourself." So Williams took that leap of faith at the beginning of the summer last year: "I called him and told him, 'Look, all you've ever done is fight for this, and all I've ever been is afraid. I'm through fighting. Today and every day, I'm yours forever.'"

"That was the day I knew she was the one," says Fox, the memory bringing tears to his eyes. That night he wrote a poem to her, "I Met My Wife Today." Shortly after, he decorated a hotel suite with memorabilia from their time together and proposed.

"He saved every picture, plane ticket, restaurant menu, wine-bottle label and matchbook," Williams says. "By the time I got halfway through the room, I was totally in tears." Not to be outdone, she had the poem he had written set to music and as a surprise sang it to him at their wedding last fall. In a classic case of romantic one-upmanship, Fox sneaked Kenny Lattimore into the reception and had him serenade her with "All My Tomorrows" for their first dance together as man and wife.

As happy as they are, the newlyweds face their share of challenges. Theirs is essentially a bicoastal relationship. Williams lives by the pocket-size Laker schedule she carries in her wallet. They try to see each other every other weekend. And that pressure is sure to increase once their child is born. "Once the baby is born it's going to be a lot tougher," she says. "I think Rick will feel as if he's missing out. And as much as I'll try, it's still only going to be four days at a time, or a holiday, or rounding up the whole bunch of kids and taking her to a game." Williams and baby will join Fox this summer for the Olympics in Sydney, Australia.

Although Fox worries constantly about the distance, he's still optimistic. "I want to be there to hear whether she says Da-Da before Ma-Ma," he sighs. "But then again, before she's finished elementary school, my career will be over."

Still, with all the difficulties, Williams would rather count her blessings than complain. "As much tragedy and scandal as I've had in my life, I've also been very fortunate. I feel truly blessed. I love my kids, I love my husband and I love my work. That supersedes all my struggles.