US (January 1995)

Sweet Revenge

Eleven years after being dethroned as Miss America, Vanessa Williams gets even with a new album and a hit Broadway show

by Danyel Smith
Photographs by Naomi Kaltman

NO ONE CAN GET THE LEAVES TO ACT RIGHT IN FRONT OF VANESSA WILLIAMS. IT'S A WARM OCTOBER DAY, and Williams is shooting the title video from her new album, The Sweetest Days. Bundled up in a swingy black suede coat against what the director would have you believe is chilly fall weather, Williams makes a striking figure in front of the brick, wrought iron and picture windows of chic Brooklyn Heights. When the big, hot lights flash on, she strolls down the middle of the street as two propmen frantically try to get the gold and red leaves to fall softly in front of the way-too-loud blower.

But the leaves drop in uninspired clumps. The crew tries again - and again - but the leaves just stand there, in little, fake-looking hills. Williams keeps right on lip-syncing, though. She works the melancholy lyrics, her tranquil blue-green eyes looking properly thoughtful and reminiscent.

She's keeping her cool, even though this shoot has turned out to be more than just a foliage fiasco. What was to have been a one-day endeavor has turned into two. Then there was the wardrobe battle: Williams wanted to dress down (jeans and a T-shirt) for the somber tune, but director Kevin Bray insisted she dress up. "I told him I don't want to be elegant," says Williams, "but it was the only thing available, and I didn't have time to argue."

Williams has learned how to pick her battles. She's also not one to pull a star hissy-fit just for the sake of being a star. "Vanessa is a joy," says her longtime makeup artist, Sam Fine, who stands by, curbside, with blush brush in hand. "Through her last two pregnancies, everything," he says. "She has her days, like we all do, but Vanessa is genuine in every gesture. Real."

Real has become the secret to Williams' success. Her last album, The Comfort Zone, sold more than a million copies, and The Sweetest Days seems destined to do the same. Currently she dances, sings and scales giant webs eight times a week in Broadway's Tony award-winning Kiss of the Spider Woman, for which she's gearing up to record a new cast album. She has also just planted fall mums (yellow, white and burgundy) in the front yard of her Westchester, N.Y., home, is taking bids from architects for the renovation of her family's house, has painted a border in her daughters' (Jillian, 5, and Melanie, 7) room and almost always gets her 20-month-old son, Devin, to his gym class on time.

Vanessa steps out with children (from left)
Melanie, Devin, and Jillian at the Big Apple Circus

"I guess," says Williams the following night at the swank Restaurant 44, "I'm an overachiever." Four prawns are what she eats for dinner, chopping their heads off with the side of her fork and washing them down with cranberry juice. The night is damp and musty, yet she's scented with something light and springy. Her chestnut hair is pulled back in a loose twist, and she looks for all the world like she's just risen from a long day draped across a chaise lounge: pretty, rested, serene. Not like she's been home all day, mommying and fielding business calls. That she beat out 49 other women in 1983 in a contest based on beauty, body, poise and congeniality is easy to believe. She could win again this year, at 31. Easily.

She says simply and with only a hint of arrogance, "I amaze myself sometimes, but really, black women have been doing this for years - working and taking care of the kids." It's all a matter of scheduling, she explains, and making time for the things she loves, like baking. "I make a mean carrot cake, and this blueberry yogurt pie - I put it in a pie dish that people can keep, and I give it as a gift." She's more animated now, talking flour, sugar and butter, than she's been all through dinner. "It's a great summer pie," she adds, like she's sharing ideas with other moms at a preschool bake sale - which she probably does, too.

VANESSA WILLIAMS DID NOT START OUT SINGING IN CHURCH, LIKE SO many other R&B singers. "I sang around the house and stuff, but when I had my first lead in a school show, my parents were impressed because they didn't know that I could sing for real." And Williams wants to make it clear: She's not an R&B but a pop singer. "I don't want to be a dance artist. I mean, Janet Jackson's extremely successful, Madonna, Paula Abdul. That's their thing, and they do it well. Me," she says with a quick smile, "I want to perform in the theater, do the piano a little bit. I want the people seated in front of me to be...I don't want to say adults, but I guess we are adults now."

That she's performing in front of adults these days as Aurora, an imprisoned sex offender's screen fantasy come to life, in Kiss of the Spider Woman is no twist of fate. Williams, has been working toward playing this kind of role ever since her days as a musical theater major at Syracuse University. "I never even had an aspiration to become a recording artist," she says. "Theater was always my big goal. Recording was what Ramon [Hervey, her manager/husband] steered me into, when I was just a celebrity trying to be taken seriously. He said I'd be able to image myself, be my own boss, and to some degree, he was correct."

"You can´t fake it on Broadway stage. You come to the party, you get good reviews , or you´re not good, and you die."

But her happiness is also based in geography: She and Hervey, 44 (who also manages pop-R&B star Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds), moved to New York from Los Angeles two years ago. For Williams, it was a genuine homecoming. "I didn't realize how depressed I was when I was living in L.A. until I moved back here," she says, taking her last sip of cranberry juice and settling in with a large mug of black coffee. "I feel so much stronger in New York. I'm doing what I want to do. People are amazed. I knew I could do this and I'm doing it." Plus, she feels more respected professionally here than out West. "You can't fake it on the Broadway stage," she says, laughing. "You come to the party, you get good reviews, or you're not good, and you die."

Williams could have been dead 11 years ago, when she, the first African-American Miss America, was asked, seven weeks before her reign was complete, to give up her crown due to sexually explicit photographs taken of her just after her freshman year in college. The private pictures were published in "go to hell" Penthouse, and a major scandal erupted. "There was definitely a time," she says, "when I got nervous, wondering, 'Am I ever going to get some decent offers?' But I knew in my heart that if I waited - the debt was settled, the crown was gone - and I got an opportunity to show my talent, it would happen to me."

During this period of her life, she says she learned her hardest lesson. "Trusting," she muses, taking a breath and surveying the dining room's dwindling crowd. "I'm a very open person, still. But the photographs, obviously - I guess I thought I would have been notified." She attributes the photography session to innocence. "If I looked differently, he wouldn't have wanted to take my picture, you know? There's a downside to not knowing [how pretty one is..... I mean, my parents were never like, 'Oh, our little princess, don't you look gorgeous.' I mowed the lawn like everyone else. I was the oldest [of two children]. I had jobs. I felt good about the way I looked, but I never felt like..."

A beauty queen?
"Exactly. So to be seen that way, to be taken advantage of that way," she falters, then sums it up: "I guess the bottom line is, everybody wants to make money. Luckily," she says of her husband, "Ramon is very protective of me."

An evening alone with husband/manager Ramon Hervey

Hervey was a vice president at a large public-relations firm in Los Angeles when he stepped in, like a knight to Williams' lady in distress, during the media-blitzed dethroning. She fell in love with him. "It was his strength," she says. "I was 21 and he was 33. He was established, confident, and he had a sense of identity. We had similar [Catholic] backgrounds and a similar appreciation for things in life. And," she says, "I was really alluring to him."

Hervey says he fell in love with Williams in the Bahamas. "We took a trip there during the first year of our relationship. I told her then," he says on the phone from their suburban home, where their kids can be heard playing in the background. "It was in my mind that our relationship would be a long-term one." He says Williams makes him a better person. "She's given me a wholeness. We've weathered the kind of storms that come up in any relationship. But the last three or four years have been better than the first three or four."

After ten years together and eight years married, Williams says they've smoothed out the rough edges. "It's a working marriage," she explains. "Meaning, it's working as a marriage, but also that we work together professionally. We know how to give each other space and respect, and it's much better. After all this time, we've figured out what we need from each other." And what about just time for each other? "Luckily," she says, "if I'm doing anything - like a video or an appearance, or I need to travel somewhere - he's with me. So in that way, it's great we work together. The downside," she says with a not-so-subtle frown, "is the kids lose both of us when we have to work, which is difficult."

VANESSA WILLIAMS' DRESSING-ROOM WALLS are lined with every single bouquet - mostly roses - she has received from family, friends and other admirers who've come to see her musical. Among the flowers - all hung upside down to dry - are brightly colored greeting cards, the best a personalized one from her kids that reads GOOD LUCK SPIDER MOMMY in bright blue crayon.

Williams says being back near her family - extended and immediate - has given her a new-found strength and "sustenance." It's a feeling that has become evident in her career as well. As Williams has grown, so has her desire to have more control over things. She's no longer shy about flexing her muscle with Ed Eckstine, the head of her label, Mercury Records, or her husband, both of whom called the shots earlier on in her career. "The first couple of albums, I just didn't know what I was doing. I told them [Ed and Ramon] to do everything and then just tell me what to do. Now on my third go-round, I'm more vocal about what I want to do."

Standing up for herself has caused some tension, though, especially in a marriage where there was at one time a clear leader and follower. "It's a bit more uncomfortable," she admits, laughing a little, "because now we have disagreements and we don't talk for a couple of days. But having strength and fighting for what I want makes me feel like an artist, not a product - which I never was, but I'm sure some people envisioned me that way: pretty packaging."

Eckstine, for one, says he never viewed Williams as just "pretty packaging" ("Our relationship goes way beyond that," he says, sitting in Mercury's midtown offices), but he has seen Williams' confidence slowly flourish over the years. "For a long time," he says, "Vanessa had a compelling need - after the controversy -to be nice to everyone. But she was 22. Now she's 31. Before, she only knew who she didn't want to be."

Hervey agrees. "Over the last two albums," he says, "Vanessa definitely has more distinct opinions and a better sense of who she is."

To get to this point, Williams had to work on her insecurities. Now, she says, she gets "edgy" more than she gets insecure. "I just come to a point," she explains, mockingly folding her arms across her chest, "when I say: 'You know what? I got to cancel it.' Whatever event or thing I have to do. Because when I get edgy, I get mean and not liking myself because I'm miserable."

The only time her confidence really gets shaky is when she's performing as herself. "I have a lot more insecurity doing my own songs on television than I would playing Aurora in front of 10 million people." It's because she can get lost in the character. "Everything is scripted. I know what my moves are. I just execute them the way I've been taught to. I love being directed, being told what works, what doesn't work. Spontaneity, really, that's the one thing that can have me insecure."

Maybe, but Vanessa Williams is in charge. And somehow not at all overwhelmed by it. She's feeling, as she puts it, "regular." And she infuses the word regular with warmth and contentedness. "Really regular," she says. "But it's more because I haven't changed that much than that I've made all these big changes. The bank account might have gotten bigger, but not that much is different with me."

Williams eyes some roses that are hanging crooked on the wall. "The older you get, the more you get to know yourself and the more you're willing to express yourself," she explains. "I'm a much stronger person now, stronger than I've ever been." And with that, Williams walks over to the bouquet and straightens it out for good.