On top of her game, Taraji P. Henson is shining like diamonds right now. Draped in the finest of garments and jewels, the actress chatted with Essence magazine for their November issue. Taraji candidly shares details about her journey and what it took to gain her own Queendom.
In our cover story, Henson peppers in wisdom and joy with healthy doses of sister-girl talk. And while she is killing it with the high fashion and fierce face on magazine covers and on the talkshow/awards show circuit, one thing the classically trained actress never forgets is the importance of taking the business of acting seriously.
"These kids are thinking they can do reality TV and come and do this craft that I studied, sweated and grinded," says Henson. "People forget it's a craft because it's so pop now...Can they make me believe the words coming out of their mouth?"
You can check the full article in the latest issue of Essence Magazine available in newsstands right now. In the meanwhile check out these fashions...
So now we know what the whole platinum blond hair situation was about a while back when Kimmie opted for such a drastic wig. Giving us her best Marilyn Monroe come here zaddy zaddy look, Kim Kardashian covers the June issue of Vogue Brazil!
Best representative of the curvilinear silhouette on the rise in red carpets , Kim Kardashian 's cover and subject of a dossier of the June issue of Vogue , dedicated to the body, which begins to arrive on Thursday ( 28.05 ) newsstands . One of the biggest media phenomena of our times , she and her family have redefined the entertainment industry this decade. Kim earned herself $ 28 million last year . Result of a number of businesses ( some of them next to the sisters ) which includes clothes for child perfumes, still going through a network of women's fashion stores. " I challenge anyone to try to do everything I do and then tell me whether or not I have talent," said the magazine.
Werkkkk bish! CiCi is killing these fashions in the May issue of L'Official Magazine. Ciara's been making her rounds, promoting her new tour and album Jackie! I hope they go hard this time with marketing her new album because people slept on that last one. Anyway check out the pics from the shoot!
Looking absolutely stunning, dressed in all white, Shonda Rhimes, Ava DuVernay, Debbie Allen, Issa Rae & Mara Brock Akil cover Essence Magazine for May 2015.
Five of the most powerful storytellers of our day grace the cover of the May issue of ESSENCE this month. Shonda Rhimes, Ava DuVernay, Debbie Allen, Mara Brock-Akil and Issa Rae, who've each made tremendous impacts on their respective mediums, look stunning in all-white dresses in the cover photo. Their confident and direct gazes, paired with million-watt smiles, speak volumes about the space they know they now occupy for us all.
Rhimes, producer/creator of the reigning must-watch evening of TV (Scandal, How to Get Away With Murder, Grey's Anatomy), says that the fact that Black women are heating up the TV world, in front of and behind the camera, is not a trend to be dissected. "It's an economic fact. There are more people of color than ever before..." she says. "When the shows start doing bigger numbers than what they think are going to be their top ten shows, it becomes really hard to suggest that it's a trend."
For Rae, creator of Awkward Black Girl and web show pioneer, social media prominence of people of color has helped drive this call for more representation in images and storylines but she wants to see many more people of color behind the scenes.
"Of course that has to happen," says DuVernay, director of Selma. "But it is more about people working autonomously, independently, to create their own structures, mechanisms, companies, outlets. Look at you, Issa—nobody was giving you anything, so you created your own work and your own platform and your own way to distribute."
Allen, who has had decades in the business as an actress and as a director, sees progress and hope. "I look at it as an opportunity. It is wide open and for the taking. When I first started, there were no women in the room, there were no Black people in the room."
And with that growth comes the opportunity to show all shades of our lives, including our sex lives.
"I've been relentless [about discussing sexuality] since Girlfriends... My feeling about sexuality and showing a consenting adult having sex is that it's so empowering," Akil says. "Because if you are making the choice, you then have to be responsible for the choice. I think that message is conveyed to the audience. You're not just there for the convenience of a man, you are there because you want it. It creates an opprotuntiy—well, hopefully—for the young lady watching or the other women watching to understand you have a say in this."
Oscar winning actress, Lupita Nyong'o, covers the April issue of Harper's Bazaar. Draped in Louis Vuitton, Lupita looks beautiful.
Since her Oscar-winning performance in 12 Years a Slave, Lupita Nyong'o has been celebrated the world over. She talks to Sophie Elmhirst about the risks and rewards of her meteoric rise to fame. Between photographs in a King’s Cross warehouse, Lupita Nyong’o dances. Nothing showy, just a shuffle of her hips or a head-nod to the beat of the music in the background. She’s surrounded by people – a circus of agents and stylists and Lancôme representatives (she’s the brand’s new ambassador) all there for her, but she doesn't dance for them. It’s the kind of dancing you might do while you’re drying your hair, or on hold on the phone; moves only you can see. But seriously, this woman can dance. At one point, she body-pops like a pro, and makes herself laugh with a full-on strut. Mostly, though, she dances in a kind of dream, eyes half-closed, like it’s the most private thing in the world. ‘There was a time when I was afraid to dance,’ says Nyong’o. The shoot’s over, and we’re in an empty café on the top floor of the building. It’s dusk and you can see all of London, to the Shard and beyond, the lights coming on across the city. She has changed out of a full-throttle orange dress and into a black sweater and trousers, as though someone has turned down the volume. Her voice is low; the music’s off; the circus has packed up and moved on. ‘My older sister would dance with abandon,’ she continues. ‘She would do it to entertain. I was so mortified at the thought of wiggling my body in any direction. And I wrestled with myself, because I didn't want to be so self-conscious. I wanted to be able to enjoy music and not care that I looked cute. I don’t know when something switched in my head, but I’m so glad it did, because I feel like dancing, and being able to enjoy one’s body for oneself is such a precious, precious thing. For yourself, you know?’ She pauses. ‘If this had happened to me at a time when I couldn't dance – ha – my God, I think I would be way more of a wreck.’
You can check out the latest issue of Harper's Bazaar in newsstands near you.
Next Up....Zoe Kravitz doesn't hold back in this interview she did for the new issue of Complex . She reveals her own struggles with eating disorders, anorexia and bulimia! I love her for being brave and touching on her own insecurities. Speaking of brave she is working the hell out of these liquid latex fashions!
In the summer of 2013, Kravitz signed on to play anorexic twentysomething Marie in the dramedy film The Road Within. As she tells it, when she got the role, she wasn’t sure if she was disciplined enough to play the part without letting her demons get the best of her. “My parents got really scared for me to go back down that road,” she says, recalling when her mother burst into tears after she came back from set one time. Kravitz couldn’t see how much weight she’d lost. She wasn’t satisfied with her frail 90-pound frame either. “It was fucked up, man,” she sighs. “You could see my rib cage. I was just trying to lose more weight for the film but I couldn’t see: You’re there. Stop. It was scary.” She got sick after filming wrapped. She didn’t get her period regularly because she was too malnourished. Her immune system shut down, her thyroid was thrown off. Recovering from the brutal shoot, she wasn’t receptive to praises from friends who were happy she was gaining weight, either. “I was like, ‘I don’t want to gain weight,’ as opposed to being like, ‘Good, I’m a normal human being.’” Recording with her friends (now Lolawolf bandmates) Jimmy Giannopoulos and James Levy helped her take her mind off what Kravitz only vaguely describes as “not a social time.” The upshot was that it eventually gave birth to the band. “[They] kept me company, and kept me sane,” she said. It wasn’t until New Year’s Eve 2013 that she decided to take a new tack. She doesn’t remember exactly what happened that day, but she remembers the feeling, and relates to it as though it’d been an otherworldly experience. “I just felt it was different,” she says. “I don’t know...if a fucking spirit came over me and said: ‘You have to stop.’” Whatever it was, she did. When trying to explain her insecurities, Kravitz cites a combination of systematic ideas about beauty and—yes—her upbringing. She says women are taught it’s not OK to think they’re beautiful: “It’s either: you’re conceited, or insecure, as opposed to just loving yourself.” She was also surrounded by “a lot of beautiful people,” and of course, her mother. “My mother’s a...,” she says, hesitating, “...beautiful woman, and I think, in some way, I felt intimidated by that sometimes.” Also: “My dad dated a lot of supermodels,” she laughs.
Photographed in all white by Bjorn Ioos, Kerry Washington looks amazing. She sat down with Net-A-Porter's The Edit magazine to give them deets on Scandal's it girl Olivia Pope.
Every Thursday evening during Scandal season, millions of us tune in not just to watch Olivia Pope do battle with her White House enemies, but to Twitter, to read actress Kerry Washington’s live tweets of each show. Those in the know also hang on to every word of @DKNY, the account of Aliza Licht, Senior Vice President of Global Communications for Donna Karan and DKNY, who tweets her reactions during every episode to her 500,000+ followers. So what happened when The EDIT took it offline and invited the two to meet during New York Fashion Week? Over to Licht…
“Don’t ever ask me to make dinner plans on a Thursday, because I will decline. You see, on Thursday nights, millions of Scandal fans sit on a virtual couch together and wait with bated breath to see what Olivia Pope – the Washington DC crisis manager portrayed by Kerry Washington, 38 – has in store for us. Using #TGIT, we know that if we don’t watch an episode live, then we better run and hide from social media.
“To me, OLIVIA is like family, and with family, it doesn’t matter if you LIKE them, you love them no matter WHAT”
Which is why, on the morning of the recent Donna Karan FW15 runway show, instead of doing my last-minute prep, I found myself sitting in the restaurant of New York’s Mandarin Oriental hotel, waiting for Washington to arrive. As a ‘gladiator’ – the pet name that Olivia Pope gives her employees and Scandal gives its fans – I couldn’t wait to chat…”
AL: Now that you have established this huge presence in social media, do you feel like you can’t make plans on Thursdays?
KW: Oh yes, I have no social life on a Thursday! Every Thursday within three weeks of my [daughter Isabelle’s] due date, I loaded up pre-tweets based on the episodes and what I would want to say.
You can read the rest of the interview here. In the meantime check out this spread.
Fresh off her nineteenth Grand Slam, Serena Williams talks to Rebecca Johnson about fitness, forgiveness, and her friendship with tennis rival Caroline Wozniacki.
When the news broke last May that Northern Irish golfer Rory McIlroy had broken off his engagement to tennis champion Caroline Wozniacki—over a telephone call, no less—Serena Williams immediately began phoning and texting her best friend on the professional women’s tour. “I was devastated,” she says. “I had planned the bachelorette party!”
Six months later, Wozniacki and Williams are sitting, thigh to thigh, on a love seat in Williams’s Palm Beach Gardens house in Florida discussing the debacle. “My phone was going crazy,” Wozniacki remembers. “But I didn’t want to talk to anyone.” Most people got the message and stopped trying. But Serena Williams isn’t most people.
“I kept calling,” Williams says unapologetically.
Wozniacki smiles at the memory. “First she texted, ‘If you don’t pick up, I am going to fly to Monaco.’ And then, ‘If you don’t answer the door, I am going to knock it down.’ So I thought, OK, I better answer the phone. And I am so glad I did. She wasn’t pitying me, like a lot of people were. I mean, it’s not like anyone died. I was in shock, but she was really helpful because she had been through it.
You can read the full interview here or pick up the latest copy of Vogue in newsstands now.
How freakin sweet is this? Lil Titan is freakin adorbs! He looks just like papa!
Kelly on what life feels like right now:
"My road to my happiness hasn't been an easy one. It hasn't been peachy all the time, but I am so, so happy," she says, reflecting on a year that saw her get married, give birth to her son, and suddenly lose her mother. She remains strong and positive, "surrounded with so much love," thanks to friends and family like her mom's best friends and Beyoncé and Solange's family.
And even with her thriving career, it's all about the family.
"My priority is my husband first," she says, laughing. "That's how the baby got there."
You can pick up the April issue of Essence March 20th.
Ummm duh!! 2 covers are always better than one of course!!! Love Love Love this photo spread Rihanna did for Harper's Bazaar China issue. Rihanna is making her rounds in time for this new album she has coming out. While we wait for that to drop, check out these photos of April's Harper's Bazaar China on newsstands now.
Taraji P. Henson is the " happiest" she's ever been in her career right now!!! No surprise there because she is taking over on the movie screen and now prime-time television. If you've been watching Empire on Fox you know that her character Cookie Lyons is nothing to play with. Don't let her sweet face fool you because will snap you in two with the blink of an eye. Taraji sat down with Uptown Magazine to talk about her role as Cookie, stereotypes and what it takes to maintain her success. Of course she had to deliver us some fashions too!!!
She’s captivating within the first few minutes of our conversation, with her distinct Washington, D.C. native accent permeating our connection. Her charisma is wide-awake even during breakfast hours, when most folks are comfortably settled into their nine-to-fives or watching the second hour of Today. Shaking off the sandman with ease, she immediately weighs in on Cookie Lyon, her starring role as a sassy matriarch who, sprung from a 17-year bid, hopes to rebuild the connection with her three sons and reclaim her piece of her successful music family’s pie. “I played a lot of characters that could’ve been borderline stereotypical women, but my job as an actress is to make the audience understand and empathize with the people. Cookie is a lot,” she says. “She wears me out but I know this woman. I’ve done my research inside and out. I took Cookie from Lee and made her my own.
We see you Taraji! Looking gorgeous!!!! You can read that full article over @ Uptown Magazine.
Taking after her famous mother Diana, Tracee Ellis Ross gives us a lesson on being fierce! The silly girl next door Black-ish actress looks gorgeous on Essence Magazine's annual Black Women in Hollywood double cover issue for March. You can pick up that issue in newsstands now!!! In the meantime check out these photos!!!
Jazmine Sullivan is "focused on her music, not fame" in Rolling Out Magazine!!! She is making a fierce comeback and I am here for all of it!!! Looking absolutely gorgeous.
When we bring up your name people really love you. How does that make you feel?
I’m grateful. I’ve been away for a few years so to come back and get this much love it just feels so good and I’m so grateful.
How do you feel about being famous?
I don’t really consider myself to be famous first of all, but I thought it was interesting. Like I said, most of all, I’m grateful. I’m grateful to be able to do what I love more than anything. Not a lot of people can do what they love, and I’m able to make music and the side effect of it is it happens to touch people, so that’s the best part of it.
Some people believe with a voice like yours, it’s easy to find fame. Would you like to set the record straight?
Easy to find fame — no, no, this was a long journey. I started very, very young and with somebody particularly like me who doesn't sound like the typical artist, who doesn't look like the typical artist, it’s definitely been hard kind of breaking in and getting people to see past the physical, because that’s what everybody thinks of. That’s what you think of when you think of a star having all of those different qualities. So that’s been the most difficult thing, but I’m just trying to be true to myself; and I think that I’m representing a lot of people out here being who I am, being the way that I am. I’m representing a lot of people who may not look like the typical artist or sound like the typical artist, but we still have a voice and we still!
Jazmine also covers Hello Beautiful's Digital Issue where she is unphotoshopped, unfiltered with her #selfiesteem in tact! LOVE IT!!!!! She mentioned in various interviews that she's put on some weight but who the hell cares? She still looks awesome. #werkbish
In the interview she gives it to us straight, no chaser about the love pains and abuse she endured during her most recent relationship.
When I asked about the catalyst for her departure from music, she answered with visible discomfort. Initially she offered one of those generic prepared responses. “I don’t really have anything specific; I’m just ready…I feel like I took enough time off… I’m kind of just ready to tell my story.” When I pressed it further, she elaborated only to say, “I went through a bad breakup and a bad relationship.”
But the next day, on stage at the Gramercy Theater, Sullivan finally confessed to hundreds of fans what precipitated her abrupt departure from the business— she had been in an abusive relationship.
In a later, post-concert interview, I asked her to elaborate about the type of abuse she experienced and the degree to which she suffered. This time she obliged, albeit carefully. “It was all kinds of abuse, I mean it started out verbally and got to a point where it became physical. It was a bad relationship. It took a heavy, heavy toll on me, so much so that I didn't even have a song to sing—I didn't feel like I did anyway.”
Sullivan said she began to alienate herself from her family and friends and admits she intentionally kept them in the dark about her personal life. As she tried to navigate her feelings, she became increasingly reclusive and moved to California, where she ultimately lost her will to perform.
“For a long time, I kind of kept away from everybody. When you know you’re not right, and you know you’re not doing something right, you try to stay away from people who will tell you that.”
It only takes one listen to one of her latest singles, “Forever Doesn't Last Always” to imagine the hurt and pain she was enduring. When I ask her if she’s worried about joining Janay Rice as an unwilling face of domestic abuse, her desire to share her story, whatever the costs, was unwavering.
“It took me a long time to feel comfortable enough to say it. I went through a lot of guilt myself, like, should I expose this? Am I being petty by talking about it? It’s a lot of feelings that women have in regards to this. But, [I realized] this can possibly help somebody to see that someone that they look up to, or listen to, or are a fan of have actually been through it, and not only have I been through it, but I came out of it. I just felt like it’s a part of my story so why not share it? I’m the face of my own situation. I don’t know if I can be the face for everybody, but I definitely want to share my story the way I’ve experienced it and I hope people can learn from it like I have.”
Finally, last but not least, Rihanna is Swimming with Sharks, for new Harper's Bazaar shoot.I don't think you understand what I said. Rih Rih posed with REAL SHARKS for this underwater fashion shoot!!! #dope
Gearing up for RihRih Season, she sat down with Laura Brown to discuss her fashions, guilty pleasures and her goals for 2015.
Asking someone to jump in a shark tank for the sake of fashion is an exercise in insanity. But Rihanna is not just someone. When I talked to her about the concept last fall, she just thought it was "cool." (Her team was slightly more anxious.) Cut to the Florida Aquarium in Tampa, one day in December. In the tank live three sand tiger sharks, none shorter than eight feet long. The sharks are used to divers, but photographers and pop stars are another thing entirely. Photographer Norman Jean Roy donned a scuba suit and jumped in. Rihanna followed—a dozen dives, and three outfit changes, while the sharks circled her intently. When the shoot was done, she was shivering, more cold than "cool." Then she flew to Germany. Just another day in the life of a global pop star who spends her life swimming with sharks.
You can read the full interview over at Harper's Bazaar. In the meantime check out these photos from the shoot!!!! #shedidthat
BONUS: Behind the Scenes Footage of Rihanna's Shoot
