BY: Denver Sean
Published 12 years ago
Beyoncé dazzles in the March issue of VOGUE. In the issue she reveals a little more than what we’re used to getting for Beyoncé, all just in time for her upcoming HBO documentary, “Life is But a Dream” airing Feb 16.
Check out an excerpt from the interview:
It’s a rainy winter evening in New York City, and inside a sprawling film studio across the river from midtown, Beyoncé Knowles is standing before a camera, cooling in her black Giuseppe Zanotti boots, awaiting a close-up. This is a commercial shoot for L’Oréal, and the business of hair is being attended to with the seriousness of a Congressional hearing. Beyoncé’s hair is shimmering in the dreamy and flawless way that hair in hair commercials is supposed to shimmer. The director forecasting hair anarchy is Jake Nava, Beyoncé’s partner for music videos like “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)”—which infamously drove Kanye West to crash Taylor Swift’s MTV Video Music Awards speech so he could declare it “one of the best videos of all time.” Nava oversees this shoot with the calm of a man with an ace tucked in his pocket. Despite the competing demands of the evening—the product; the client; a fantastic, pulsing video screen that spills onto the floor and looks like Liberace’s fish tank—Nava keeps the focus on Beyoncé. Come on. This is about Beyoncé. Let Beyoncé be Beyoncé.
The camera rolls. A wind machine blasts. Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough” booms over a sound system. Then Prince’s “Lovesexy.” Beyoncé begins to do hip turns and shoulder swivels and unleashes a sultry pout with just the right level of safe-for-parents suggestiveness. From behind a monitor, Nava’s London accent offers cheeky, Austin Powers–y encouragements:
“Wow!”
“Yeah, man!”
“Wow, great, Beyoncé—that’s really good, man.”
“More!”
“Different stuff!”
Nava doesn’t offer specifics; Beyoncé knows what he wants. That preternatural sense is how you sell tens of millions of records and get mega–endorsement deals and become one of the most iconic entertainers of your generation. Beyoncé long ago achieved mononym status, but along the way she did something bigger: She accelerated beyond simply making music and an occasional movie and became less of a pop comet than a carefully curated brand. As her competition was spilling out of limousines, Beyoncé remained the knockout in six-inch heels who still gets home by 11:00 p.m. Responsibility over recklessness. President Obama said not long ago that the superstar “could not be a better role model for my girls.”
You can read the full interview here.