If I was in Rihanna’s shoes, I would have made some really different decisions about post-birth scheduling. She gave birth to her son, Name Still Unknown, in May of this year. She’s had a short maternity leave, but really she’s been working non-stop for months. She released her first song in years, “Lift Me Up,” for Wakanda Forever. She organized the Savage X Fenty Vol. 4 show, featuring Johnny Depp. She also signed on to perform at the Super Bowl Half-time show in February. The Halftime show is a massive commitment and everyone expects a giant spectacle, a spectacle for which Rihanna will have to oversee and approve every part. By the Super Bowl, her baby won’t even be 10 months old! She could have scheduled this stuff differently, I’m just saying. Rihanna spoke to Vogue ahead of the Prime Video premiere of the Fenty show (it will air on November 9th, it was already filmed this weekend). Some highlights:
Working after having a baby: “I thought I was gonna get just right back to work and I did,” she said from the soundstage where she took pre-show interviews, perfectly made up and clad in an alligator-embossed Alaïa minidress. “Then I took a little break, and then came back, and now I’m back outside.”
She’s mom-tired: “I used to get tired and just push through and keep going. This is a tired that you have no control over it. Your body is shutting down. And just recently I pushed through three days at the studio in a row—like, slept in the studio—to get a song done because it’s a project that’s really important to me coming out. I believed it and I wanted to be a part of it, so I got it done.”
The Johnny Depp appearance at the Fenty show: Savage x Fenty Volume 4 premieres on Prime Video on November 9, and features models like Precious Lee, Cara Delevingne, Joan Smalls, Irina Shayk, Zach Miko, and Lara Stone; actors like Marsai Martin, Simu Liu, Damson Idris, Taraji P. Henson, and Abbott Elementary Emmy winner Sheryl Lee Ralph; social media superstars Rickey Thompson and Avani Gregg and musician Bella Poarch; and performances from artists like Anitta, Burna Boy, Don Toliver, and Maxwell. In early November it was revealed that Johnny Depp was also included as part of the cast. (He walks to OutKast’s “So Fresh, So Clean.”) Rihanna was proud of the production, she told Vogue. “It looks so freaking good. It’s beautiful. It is one of those things that you say you want to do and the logistics are impossible but we somehow pulled it off.”
The work-life balance going? “Not much balance,” she says. “But everything is stimulating. Everything right now is firing off. I’m excited. It’s getting me super motivated, super energized to do new things, to create, and I’m back in the studio and now we’re going to be back on stage for the Super Bowl. Which is just crazy that I even agreed to that, but I am, and I’m excited. Of course being a new mom is insane. It is lovely. It is epic, honestly.”
Her favorite part of being a new mom? “His smile. He is the happiest baby. No matter what you’re doing or what you’re feeling, when he smiles at you everything else just goes away. It’s the best.” She’s not ruling out the possibility that she would design kids’ clothing, either. “We didn’t get there yet but it’s something that I might do. We’ll see. I would have so much fun with that. Anything in miniature is just so cute.”
The Halftime Show. “I almost didn’t do it, actually. It was one of those things that I took a while to really say yes to, because I knew that it was a huge commitment and it was something that I couldn’t take back once I committed. So I took my time really agreeing to that, and it became this challenge in me that I needed to see through.” She found motherhood to be a key part of the process. “It’s now or never, and also, you feel like, I could do anything now.”
Again, she could just… not go at this pace? It reminds me of Beyonce saying no to Coachella soon after she had the twins – she ended up giving herself a proper maternity leave, with time to really put her bonkers Coachella show together. Instead of simply giving herself time, Rihanna just expects to be able to pick up where she left off. She was honestly taking it so much easier before she even got pregnant. As for the Depp stuff… it continues to be disgusting. She didn’t hesitate, she didn’t get second thoughts. She really invited a domestic abuser to her Fenty show and had his parade around.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
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- Los Angeles Premeire Of . Featuring: Rihanna Where: Los Angeles, California, United States When: 26 Oct 2022 Credit: BauerGriffin/INSTARimages.com/Cover Images
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- Los Angeles Premeire Of . Featuring: Rihanna Where: Los Angeles, California, United States When: 26 Oct 2022 Credit: BauerGriffin/INSTARimages.com/Cover Images
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- Los Angeles Premeire Of . Featuring: Rihanna Where: Los Angeles, California, United States When: 26 Oct 2022 Credit: BauerGriffin/INSTARimages.com/Cover Images
“So Fresh, So Clean” Really?! Fresh and clean he is not.
Right? I’ll never be able to listen to that song in the same way again ☹️
These are two of the very last words I would ever use to describe him.
Of all the songs for a rancid, entitled abuser to walk to … ugh. She sounds proud of playing into a abusive system that has long enabled abusers and vilifies those who speak out against them
Ick. I’m so through with her.
Hope she is proud she has lost fans because of her ignorance and her support of another abusive man.
I feel sorry for everyone else in the show. Some of them are really fantastic and their cool moment has been ruined and overtaken by the scarf monster and Rihanna’s pig-headedness. He has tainted the entire thing.
I don’t get why she’s supporting an abuser. Of all the people.
Thanks Rihanna for reminding me that you were always terrible and I won’t be watching this show.
She can be super proud, that’s fine. I’ll never buy another Fenty product, and I was a fan. I also used to buy a fair bit of Dior beauty and have stopped. I’m just one person, and have no illusions that I’m making a grand difference. But it matters to me to try to minimize, where I can (and I know I can’t, always), mixing my dollars with those that support garbage like Depp.
Same, and Fenty was my absolute favorite beauty brand (if anyone has recommendations for brands of similar quality and skin tone diversity, please share!). I hate the idea that many people hold that, just because a single person can’t make a huge difference, we shouldn’t try. I have to do it for the sake of my own conscience.
Made Up Beauty is a Canadian company owned by a woman of colour. Lots of shades. It’s a lot smaller so might not have everything you are looking for but I’ve loved everything I’ve gotten from her. http://www.made up beauty.com
Also look into Mented cosmetics and Fashion fair. Both are black owned.
Again, these are smaller companies, but you should check out Mented Cosmetics, Uoma Beauty and Ami Cole. And if nothing else, get yourself some of the original Ami Cole lip treatment oil as a treat sometime. It is beautiful.
Uoma Beauty
Fashion Fair
Mented
LYS Beauty
Juvia’s Place
Danessa Myricks Beauty
Pat McGrath
Thanks, everybody!
NYX is also good. They have excellent products with an extremely diverse shade range. Lots of different undertones as well.
NYX isn’t Black-owned. Their products are decent but I think OP was specifically looking for Black-owned brands
Pat McGrath. More expensive, but better that Fenty.
Same here. I am over Fenty and Dior.
Pat McGrath, Dynessa Myricks, LYS Beauty, Mented would be my suggestions. I haven’t tried the others.
-Cucumbers.
Not a brand, just the fruit. Rejuvinates your skin if you put it on you.
-Don’t sunbathe.
-Eat avocados.
-Drink lots of water
Especially the sunbathing seems the worst. I have closely related relatives in their sixties (very near in age), where the sunbather is very wrinkled and the one who almost never did that barely has any wrinkles even now.
Same. I’m glad that I’m almost out of the Fenty skin products, because ai don’t plan on repurchasing.
I’m with you, which is too bad. I’m very pale with cool undertones, Fenty has a shade that works perfect and is high quality (most brands tend to run pale warm or too cool/pink). The search is on now.
“ It reminds me of Beyonce saying no to Coachella soon after she had the twins – she ended up giving herself a proper maternity leave, with time to really put her bonkers Coachella show together.”
And Beyonce still overworked herself. She’s been quoted as saying she would never do it again.
As for Rihanna, she says the challenge motivates her, we will see if she’s up for it.
She’s not.
Rihanna does not have the discipline like Beyoncé. Very few performers born after the 1980s are as fastidious and disciplined as Beyoncé. And with a brand new baby? The half-time show will be a hot mess.
I agree with your previous post about this whole situation. There has got to be way more to it behind the scenes. Riri, like so many other women, understand personally the trauma of toxic, violent, unhinged, awful men. There’s no way she randomly decided “I HAVE to have Johnny Depp involved in my show”. I would bet big Disney money is behind this Depp PR comeback of the likes we’ve never seen.
It’s possible she fell for the “Amber is an abuser” narrative. In that case, she believes she is helping the victim, which in on itself is honorable. I wouldn’t even blame her, the support for Johnny is off the scale, even most of the media is pretending he is a wronged saint. It’s like some kind of collective amnesia.
It’s easy to see how people could fall for Johnny Depp’s PR. For a lot of people, he needed to have actually lost his trial to be seen as guilty. At the same time Rihanna, like a few other public figures and past faves who it hasn’t been comfortable to acknowledge this about-has a tendency to support abusive men. It doesn’t mean they deserve what they get or that people need to stop caring when misogyny or racism are directed at these women (because we sure as hell don’t stop caring when racism, homophobia, etc. are directed at flawed men, or try to coerce others out of caring about it). But it’s a flaw that she and a lot of people have.
She is a victim but she is plenty toxic on her own. Of course she is more than capable of randomly deciding she wanted him. Shock value and she probably sympathizes.
Unfortunately the Johnny Depp stuff is a thing just on the internet in real life people either are sympathetic to him or believe both of them were abusive.
It’s not because she’s been a victim that she can spot an abuser on the contrary she might see in him a fellow victim.
I think she’s terrible, but I won’t judge her on how soon/much she works after having her baby. That’s for her alone to decide.
Honestly as hardcore rih fan i think she just fell for the pr campaign. As dv victim I think she was supporting him. I was soooooo shocked to see many smart and kind people in my personal life fall for tik tok pr campaign. I literally had to educate everyone I know because so many genuinely believed she abused him. Thankfully after I told everyone they saw it. But yeah I have to give it to him and his nasty pr team they did the best campaign ever. Let’s pray Brad Pitt doesn’t do the same.
It’s crazy the effect this PR had, it almost fooled me too. I had to resonate myself and my boyfriend as well, since he was starting to believe it. Crazy how much we can be manipulated with “good clapbacks” from lawyers and short clips
When the Chris Brown thing happened, I felt so sorry for her. I didn’t even know who Chris Brown was at that point, but I really liked her.
However, afterwards, she seemed to enjoy showing people she was still (or back) with him as a kind of ‘take that, public opinion’.
Have been meh on her since.
I always got the same vibe from her! I know why many women go back to their abusers but with Rihanna it felt very different. Maybe she just hates being thought of as a victim to the point she’s willing to go to these extremes to not appear like one?
This Johnny Depp thing might be coming from that same place.
I won’t be watching this show.
Exactly. What I meant is not a woman just going back to her abuser.
She seemed to enjoy making a point of it.
Go sit next to Kate Moss, your fellow supporter of DV and smear tactics. Pathetic.
Um….Rihanna is not going to pull off the Half-Time Show. She has not good stage performer before baby and now still postpartum she’s going to become one??
I think she’ll back out.
Rihanna has a tendency to be mean to other women when it has nothing to do with her. I cancel her
Thanks for the tips re the Black owned beauty companies everyone!
What happened to standing in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick by refusing to do the half time show? Maybe its to please her mentor/founder Jay-Z, whom the NFL billionaires put in charge of the entertainment side of the NFL (after the accusations of racism were too loud to ignore, they made this bs position).
I’ve never heard of her being an entertainer. There’s a difference between being a good or great singer and being an all around entertainer. Entertainers like Beyonce, Elton John, Prince, MJ, Janet, Cher, etc. I think putting on a bad half time show would not be good for her music career – her stans Rihanna Navy won’t care and she might not either but still…
I don’t follow her career that closely but she has always come across as a savvy businesswoman. So I’m confused as to why she would want to go near Johnny Depp. It just doesn’t seem to fit with her brand at all, surely his involvement is only going to lose her customers?
The Johnny Depp stuff sucks. I didn’t see it coming and it felt like a gut punch. I agree with some of you who posted in the comments above that she probably fell for JD being abused. During that trial, she was at the very end of her pregnancy. A couple days before giving birth, there were stories about AH stealing from Rihanna’s DS interview years earlier. I 100% believe AH was abused by JD, but she’s not a perfect victim. This might be where the Fenty4 mess started.
No one is a perfect victim. And that’s exactly why the JD thing has gone over the way it has. Because people expect women to be perfect victims. The story about her stealing Rihanna’s DS interview was false. And as a celeb herself, Rihanna should know better.
Thank you for writing an article that advises new mothers to start slow, Kaiser. Hopefully, Rihanna will be able to handle having a lot on her phone late. It can be difficult to see when you go too far or work too hard after having a baby, because you don’t always realize you can’t maintain the same pace as before. After having to take it easier during the pregnancy, I totally understand why she would want to throw herself into work again.
I mean… she’s sympathetic to her own abuser. Did we expect anything different?
It really is bizarre that she had stepped away from music for years before getting pregnant and now she’s diving into so many projects at once.
As for the JD thing — she’s always struck me as a somewhat ignorant person who upholds a lot of misogyny. Not surprising, but still hugely disappointing.
No, Rihanna. You go out of your way to glorify an abuser? Absolutely NO.
She sounds a bit manic right now.
She also unfollowed Megan the Stallion and appears to be throwing support behind Tory Lanez. Kinda over her now.
Refreshing to find this space absent of the toxicity and misogyny that I see across social media platforms! Give yourselves a pat on the back for being the adults in the room!! I agree that this is a disastrous career move for her. Is it possible these were corporate decisions made by her label or others above her head?
This place is an oasis in a desert where every grain of sand is an attack on a woman.
Possible but unlikely. She’s a world wide icon.
Idc I still love her. Rihanna has a lot of trauma, I think people are being too harsh on her about this, that’s my opinion.
Most people have trauma and Rihanna is no exception especially given how public hers has been. But she’s been supporting R. Kelly, she looks like she supports Tory Lanez, she’s fine with Nicki Minaj and her rapist husband, and now this. I can feel sorry for her trauma without wanting to give her my money anymore because of her actions.
I will no longer be buying Fenty after I run out of my current stash. I wish it was enough to make a difference but I doubt it will. But at least my conscience will be clean
Now I kinda get it. Her saying she’ll never sing Umbrella again at any of her concerts. She wasn’t being cheeky hinting at some future collab with Tom. No she’s butthurt about it and decided to be a b}tch.
“It reminds me of Beyonce saying no to Coachella soon after she had the twins – she ended up giving herself a proper maternity leave, with time to really put her bonkers Coachella show together. ”
That’s not what happened. Beyonce was announced as Coachella headliner right after New Years 2017, she announced her pregnancy in February. At the end of the month, her performance was postponed until the next year. She gave birth in June. I believe she’s said she started rehearsals six months out. So four months of maternity leave.
This stuff with Depp is disgusting. I winced the first time I heard the lyric, “…it beats me black and blue…” from Love on the Brain.
Surprise surprise. I never got the adoration around this one, for real.
Well, she should not be proud of the Johnny Depp choice. Hell, she COULD have asked Amber Heard on the show to model or whatever, not the decrepit, abusive Depp, who has claimed to be 5’10”, but on a good day, I imagine he’d never been bigger than 5’5″ and since then he’s certainly shrunk (in height and morality).
It was a good show. It didn’t revolve around Johnny Depp. He was in for like 1 minute. I do wish Sheryl Lee Ralph got more screen time.