Billboard: Michelle Williams Explains How Destiny’s Child Reunion Came Together For Beyonce’s Coachella Performance
Michelle Williams knows how to keep a secret. “We’re the secret queens,” the singer tells Billboard in the wake of performing two consecutive weekends at Coachella with headliner Beyoncé and Kelly Rowland. The trio, who rose to commercial acclaim in the late ‘90s and early aughts as Destiny’s Child, had been keeping the surprise under wraps since February, when Bey reached out to her former band members and asked them to join her for a medley of their mega-hits including “Say My Name,” “Lose My Breath” and “Soldier.”
“It’s just like old girlfriends coming together,” explains the 37-year-old, who last reunited as Destiny’s Child at the 2015 Stellar Awards where they performed her upbeat gospel single “Say Yes.” “It’s something that when the three of us come together, we all know we feel safe within each other. Like I got your back. We’re good. I really love that about us.”
Since Destiny’s Child went on hiatus in the wake of their last album, 2004’s Destiny Fulfilled, Williams hasn’t slowed. She’s put out four solo full-lengths including her final release, 2014’s Journey to Freedom (which won’t be her last); starred on stage as leads in Chicago and Aida; launched her own furniture and candle line Believe by Michelle; and, more recently, got engaged to pastor Chad Johnson just prior to her Coachella performance. Still teeming with excitement from the pair of shows, Williams explains how it all came together.
There were rumors before Coachella that a Destiny’s Child reunion might happen. How did the conversations begin for this? Did Beyoncé call you and just say, “It’s time?”
Yeah, that’s really what it is. We talk all the time so when she called I just thought she was gonna say, “Hey I wanna go to lunch, I wanna come to dinner” or something. So it literally was the phone call, like yay. “Y’all know I’m doing Coachella, I would love for y’all to come out and we’ll figure out what we’re going to do.” And I’m like, of course. I love performing with the girls. There’s nothing like it. Something happens when the three of us come together. I just love the power it shows, the unity that it shows, that no matter where we are in life — personally, career wise — that we make time for each other.
It seems like you’ve always had this connection with each other. You perform together every few years.
Every few years, right? Doesn’t it seem like a cool pattern every two to three years, it just seems like we do something. I’ll never forget years ago when we announced… I wouldn’t even call it the first breakup, when we announced our first hiatus or the second hiatus, we were doing an interview and I remember Beyoncé saying we will always do stuff together, on each other’s projects, videos, tours, whatever. And guess what? We have kept that promise.
Beyoncé’s show was impeccable. Everything was thought out down to the most minute detail. How far in advance did you guys start working on this?
I know for her performance period, people started coming to town in like January. And that’s to get the music and for her to go over her ideas musically. So the music director’s in town and the musicians. It’s kind of deconstructing what you already know and trying to do something fresh, especially because she took that year off and she had a baby and she couldn’t do Coachella last year. So she was just like, “I’ve got to do something fresh that’s never been done” as far as an artist having all those people on stage with her at the same time. I’d say we started with our portion maybe toward the end of February. So it was kinda like keeping it secret all this time.
Quite obviously. Beyoncé particularly is very under wraps.
Beyoncé has been very private all of the years that I’ve known her. She’s fun, goofy, laughs, everything, but she’s always been very private. So those around her who are her friends, you kind of respect that. But even if she wasn’t that private, when you’re friends with somebody or when you call somebody your sister, they might tell you something, you don’t tell that.
How do you keep that many people from spoiling the surprise?
Well, I think it’s just a given. I don’t know what all the band members were told, but I’m assuming that people had to sign confidentiality agreements. That’s the only way that something of that magnitude was kept. I mean, even the location of where we were rehearsing, I was like okay, I just know paparazzi is gonna get wind of this soon. But no. She was able to be comfortable and rehearse without her stuff getting leaked. And that’s just a precedent she has set and I think more people can learn from that.
