Vanessa Williams - ‘It would be hard to be married to me!’

How To Fail With Elizabeth Day

Sony Music

Society & Culture

4.8 • 9.4K Ratings

🗓️ 16 July 2025

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As a recording artist, Vanessa Williams has earned 13 Grammy nominations and racked up over 212 million digital streams over the course of her eight albums. Her most popular hit, Save The Best For Last, was Number 1 for five weeks in 1992. She is also a highly successful stage and screen actor, appearing in Desperate Housewives and Ugly Betty. She is currently starring on the West End stage as Miranda Priestly in the musical adaptation of The Devil Wears Prada. It’s all a long way from her historic crowning as the first African-American Miss America in 1983 - she was later forced to resign after unauthorised photos taken when she was a student were leaked without her consent. Vanessa joins us for an honest, hilarious and no-holds-barred conversation about her childhood, her romantic relationships, and - in a How To Fail first - why she regrets sending her daughter to boarding school. Elizabeth and Vanessa answer YOUR questions in our subscriber series, Failing with Friends. Join our community of subscribers here: https://howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content Have a failure you’re trying to work through for Elizabeth to discuss? Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com I have an upcoming one-off show at Cadogan Hall on 21 Sep for my new novel One of Us. Full show details here: ⁠https://www.fane.co.uk/elizabeth-day Production & Post Production Coordinator: Eric Ryan Studio & Sound Engineer: Matias Torres Assistant Producer: Suhaar Ali Senior Producer: Hannah Talbot Executive Producer: Carly Maile How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, wonderful listeners and viewers. Now, don't forget about my subscriber show,
0:05.3	Failing with Friends, where my brilliant guests get to be agony aunts, uncles or non-binary
0:11.3	advice givers. Join the family. Just follow the link in the show notes. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with me, Elizabeth Day.
0:28.9	This is the podcast that believes failure connects us all, whoever we might be, wherever we might have come from.
0:35.4	And that's why I ask a guest every single week about three times they failed in their
0:40.0	life and what, if anything, they learned along the way.
0:43.4	My life goal was not to be Miss America.
0:46.6	That was part of the journey.
0:48.6	My expectations of what a true man was was really high.
0:52.7	So I think it would be hard to be married to me.
0:59.2	Recently, I had the absolute pleasure of speaking to the one and only Pamela Anderson,
1:05.4	pinch me, all thanks to the Dove Self-Esteen Project.
1:09.5	In this very special episode, we speak about the
1:12.1	impact Y2K has had on women's body confidence and how Pamela has regained control and is
1:17.4	defining beauty on her own terms. The Dove Self-Esteen project is an amazing initiative
1:22.9	supported by science-backed methodology that we can all introduce into our lives to help us improve
1:29.1	our relationship with our bodies. To find more body confidence building exercises and a supporting
1:34.4	workbook, go to dove.com forward slash Y2K. That's Y2K spelled WHY2K. Vanessa Williams grew up in Westchester County, New York, a child of two music
1:48.2	teachers. She studied French horn, piano, violin and dance, and one of her early memories is of
1:54.9	turning the pages of sheet music as her mother played the organ for weddings. With such a creative upbringing, it's perhaps no surprise
2:02.9	that Williams went on to make her mark in music.
2:06.5	As a recording artist, she has earned 13 Grammy nominations
	...

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