Vanessa Williams who is starring in The Devil Wears Prada at The West End reveals how some Americans wanted her killed when she was crowned Miss America 1983
Stepping onstage to be crowned Miss America Vanessa Williams couldn’t believe she was actually there.
Although confident in her talent and intelligence, this was 1983 and there had never been a black Miss America before. She had made history. But it wasn’t long before Vanessa experienced firsthand that not everyone was happy about the positive progression.
The actress, now best known for her roles in Ugly Betty and Desperate Housewives, says: “It was the quickest lesson to realise that yes, there’s division in the United States. Yes, there is bigotry and prejudice. “
She adds: “I was kind of in a successful bubble, and when I won at twenty years old and being black, I realised, oh I’m getting hate mail because of who I am and what I look like. I was getting death threats, my parents had an FBI file…”
Being in such a high profile position had lots of positives, but having been brought up in multicultural New York, she was shocked at what she experienced. She continues: “It was the biggest kind of achievement, but also the biggest slap in the face because racism rears its ugly head.
“I was born in 1963 and my parents had me in the middle of John F. Kennedy being shot, Martin Luther King about to be shot, I mean, all this racial unrest, but all this lovely movement for empowerment…And I thought those days were over. We had done it and solved it.”
Talking on the food podcast Dish from Waitrose, Vanesssa, now 61, compares her experience to current times. She’s well aware the fight for racial equality is far from over – especially after Kamala Harris’ defeat in the US general election. Many in the States fear Donald Trump and the right-wing Republicans running The White House will only increase divisions in society. That’s why she thinks it’s important to support each other.
“I would get elderly black women in tears saying, ‘I never thought I’d see the day’,” she recalls of her historic Miss America win. “And I remember being at the inauguration of Obama and that same kind of wave of ‘I never thought this day would happen’ and how proud you are collectively as a community.”
Vanessa also reflects on Kamala, and how close she came to being the first black female president of America.
“[It is a ] similar thing with Kamala, which we just obviously saw what happened with that,” Vanessa says. “But that kind of collective energy of ‘Can this be the first? Can this be a game changer?’ It’s like a family moment…So it’s.. it’s heartbreaking, but it’s also very uplifting.”
Talking of uplifting, Vanessa’s career soared after her historic win, first with a singing career for which she received multiple Grammy Award nominations, then onto an acting career on Broadway and TV.
Now, Vanessa is about to hit the stage in the London’s West End, as no-nonsense fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly in a musical version of The Devil Wears Prada. The role was originally played by Meryl Streep in the 2006 movie, but shares more than a few similarities to her character in Ugly Betty, the no-nonsense fashion magazine creative director Wilhelmina Slater.
It might be a character in a familiar world, but Vanessa admits last-minute tweaks to scripts and songs are putting her to the test.
Talking to Nick Grimshaw and Angela Hartnett OBE in a podcast released this week she says: “At 61, my mind is not as agile as these young twenty somethings that can put in new lyrics and have it flawlessly. I’ve got sticky notes and pads all over the place!
“It’s really, really tough. And I’m like, why am I doing this?…[but] I love it.”
The musical, which features an original music score by Elton John, opens at the Dominion Theatre in London on December 1.
Vanessa, who attended the Mirror’s Pride of Britain Awards in association with TSB last month to present an award, is clearly raring to get on stage as Miranda, and says: “Jerry Mitchell, who is our director and choreographer, has done such a brilliant job taking a franchise from a movie that everybody knows every word of and bringing it to stage, which is quite a feat because you want to stay true to what people love. So, a lot of my lines are, ‘By all means, move at a glacial pace’!”
But while Miranda’s frosty delivery is something fans cannot wait to see from Vanessa, it is delivering Wilhelmina withering putdowns in Ugly Betty, that gave the actress her most iconic onscreen role to date.
Vanessa still has fond memories of her time on the hit show. She says: “Our read-throughs were hilarious because I never knew what was gonna happen next.
“What was she gonna do this episode – take the cold sperm from her dead husband? It’s just like, what? Playing softball with Naomi Campbell, being on the roof and just smashing mannequins… Our talent was so deep as an ensemble, we just couldn’t wait to play.”
Vanessa Williams appears on today’s [WED] new episode of Dish from Waitrose, which is available on all podcast providers
