Cosmopolitan: Michelle Williams on Beyoncé and Eating Honey Buns for Coachella
For two consecutive Saturdays in April, Michelle Williams joined Beyoncé and Kelly Rowland in the desert for a Destiny’s Child reunion at Coachella. The ladies wore custom Balmain creations, delivered medleys of their greatest hits, and stood tall with hundreds of dancers and members of marching bands from black colleges. According to Michelle, the DC reunion started with a phone call. “We are in touch all the time, whether it’s going to dinner or something like that,” she tells Cosmopolitan.com. “I just remember Bey on the phone being like, ‘Hey, I’m doing Coachella, I’d like for you to be part of it.’ And it’s like, of course. Of course. When it comes to my girls, I’m going to be there as best as I can, as much as I can.”
After the first weekend of Coachella, Beyoncé’s mom Tina shared on Instagram that she had reservations about how a mostly white audience would react to seeing black culture and black college culture on stage. “I was very confident,” Michelle says of Beyoncé’s vision. “And you have to give it to Miss Tina. That’s her daughter. A mother might have concerns that someone else might not even think about or worry about. I think she was coming from a place of, ‘You worked so hard to do this kind of a show, I just don’t want there to be any criticism. I don’t want the criticism to overshadow the hard work that you put into this amazing production.’” For Michelle, the theme of Beyoncé’s Coachella performance hit all the right notes. “I went to school for two years and was always interested in being in a sorority. Some of that stuff, I’d seen on campus. Every year they have homecoming,” she says. “Everything Beyoncé did on stage happens at Howard University, Grambling, Morehouse.”
While Beyoncé went vegan to prep for Coachella, Michelle turned to something sweet and soft. “I just ate all the Honey Buns in the world… just making sure I was getting the correct intake of calories,” she says. “I’m not doing anything on purpose to be slim. I literally have to have a certain amount of calories to maintain a healthy weight. Sometimes I feel bad talking about it, [since] people concentrate on those who need to lose weight. But what about those who want to gain? That’s just where I’m at. My metabolism has totally changed.”
