Mathew walked into the home he had once shared with Alex, his eyes dark and haunted. “We spoke for a while and he seemed better,” Alex says. “I felt better, too. I then began to feel hopeful that we could get past this thing without it being even more of a circus. I felt that maybe we could move past it.”
Alex’s father, Virgil, and brother Jonathan quickly flew into town to help negotiate a peaceful accord. Everyone checked in to the Beverly Wilshire, which was to be command central for the negotiation of a treaty. At first it actually seemed as if the two had reached a compromise. But then things took a decidedly dark turn when, again according to Alex, Mathew asked that his name be removed from the birth certificate. “I said, ‘No, Mathew!’ ” she recalled. “Why would I strip another human being of his identity? I would never give a child a false start in life.’ I cussed him out in front of everybody. I’ve never been a shrinking violet, and he knew that.
“At one point, he even floated the idea of me handing the baby over to Beyoncé and Jay Z to adopt and then raise as their own. This, of course, was a big surprise. Of course I told him that it was out of the question. Looking back on it, I doubt that he even approached Beyoncé with the idea. I can’t imagine that she and Jay Z would have ever agreed to raise a child born to her father and a woman who was not her mother.” Mathew has never responded publicly to these claims.
“He showed up at my house after that meeting, upset,” Alex recalled. “His whole thing was, ‘I’m losing everything. You have to stop.’ I felt badly for him. But I had already lost everything. Thanks to the press coverage, I had lost my credibility, my dignity, my reputation. The solution, in my mind, was for him to step up and support our child. But obviously by this time we were spinning out of control. We were fractured souls. There was no release of pain, just us holding on to it as tightly as possible.”
Tina Files for Divorce
On November 11, 2009, Tina Knowles finally filed for divorce from Mathew Knowles. Her action came just a month after he was named in AlexSandra Wright’s paternity suit. “When the family finally broke apart for real,” Alex says, “it was devastating, across the board. It took my breath away. I didn’t think it would ever happen. Mathew never thought they’d divorce. Despite all that had happened, family honor and loyalty was still everything to him. Besides that, Tina was the one good choice he’d made in his lifetime, and he definitely didn’t want to let her go.”
“One day, my world just exploded and I knew I had to get a divorce,” Tina would recall years later in October 2014. After so many years of pain and unhappiness, she finally had to come to terms with the fact that the family she so treasured had been forever altered. Still, according to all accounts, it was impossible for her to truly hate Mathew for what had happened. She knew him well, and for years had been accepting of his faults. He would always be family to her. Of course, it would have been easy to blame him for everything, and obviously he was not without fault. However, Tina finally began to realize her own culpability in their codependent relationship. After all, it had been her choice to stay with him for more than thirty years; nobody forced her to remain in the marriage. In recent years, though, dealing with the ever-crumbling relationship had all but drained the joy from her days. Now painfully conscious of the emptiness in her life, she knew what she had to do. She would no longer live with the crushing oppression of a vacant marriage. She also knew she would have her daughters’ support. In fact, she was counting on it. “We will now pull through and stick it out together,” she reportedly told her girls, “because that’s what family does.”
From all accounts, Beyoncé, Solange, and also Kelly were pleased with Tina’s decision, and proud of her for finding the courage to make it. Beyoncé was on tour in England on the day Tina filed, but mother and daughter had many long-distance telephone calls.
“It does something to your whole psyche, your whole self-esteem, because I had been married for thirty-three years,” Tina later said, choking back tears. “I had never . . . I mean, I hadn’t known anything else. I was very sad. My family is quite intertwined, so it was very difficult for me to detangle myself from it. But I knew that I didn’t have a choice but to do that. I did it, but it was very hard.”
The day after Tina moved to officially end her marriage, things also ended, and very badly, between Mathew and Alex. On the morning of November 12, there was to be one more settlement conference for the couple in the law offices of Neal Hersh and Judy Bogen. Though Alex thought they might be able to reach an accord, it wasn’t meant to be.
“We need to finish this conversation, Mathew,” Alex said as he prepared to bolt from the conference. “No. Actually we don’t,” Mathew concluded.
From that time on, Alex and Mathew would only communicate with each other through attorneys, and only see each other in court.
Nixon
Nixon Alexander Knowles Wright was born on February 4, 2010. Because of the high-profile attention the pregnancy generated, Alex Wright was forced to use the pseudonym of “Kitty LaRoux” when she checked into Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Obviously, anyone who has any connection to Beyoncé, no matter how tenuous, becomes the subject of great paparazzi scrutiny when a scandal is breaking big. Luckily, the lady herself was able to hightail it out of New York after launching her new fragrance, Heat, at Macy’s. Beyoncé was due to perform in Florianópolis, Brazil, the day Nixon was born, far away from U.S. media scrutiny.
A DNA test was conducted on March 4, which proved that Mathew truly was Nixon’s biological father—not that there was any doubt about it. With four being an important number in Beyoncé’s life—she was born on September 4, Jay on December 4, they were married on April 4, and she has the Roman numeral IV tattooed on her wedding finger—how ironic, then, is it that a child born on the fourth and then confirmed to be a Knowles on the fourth would end up being the catalyst for so much change in her family?
Despite all of the upset with Alex, Mathew eventually agreed to what would have to be considered a very substantial and generous financial package for her and Nixon: about $12,000 a month in child support, as well as a fund for many of Alex’s legal and accounting fees and household expenses.
The Death of Sasha Fierce
She had been going strong for so many years that by 2010, twenty-eight-year-old Beyoncé Giselle Knowles was physically and emotionally drained, but not just by her record-breaking career, but by her personal life as well. “I was a bit numb and kinda lost,” is how she put it. Certainly what had happened to her parents’ marriage had been devastating to her and promised to alter the landscape not only of her personal life but her career as well. How could she now continue with Mathew as her manager, considering what had happened with AlexSandra Wright? And what of the audit presently being conducted? No matter its results, her professional rapport with Mathew would be negatively impacted as a result of her even having ordered it. Obviously, she had a lot of thinking to do. Thus Beyoncé would spend most of 2010 coming to terms with everything that had happened.
First, she went on the road with Jay, starting in Auckland, New Zealand. Then she spent five weeks relaxing in Australia, “taking in the sights of Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and my favorite Aussie city, Sydney. It was a carefree existence for me.” After that, it was off to Japan, then on to London, and then Russia, where she took in the ballet Swan Lake. She whisked her nephew, Julez, to Paris. She also went to Croatia, where she says, “I floated on my back for close to an hour in the Mediterranean Sea. It was one of the best moments of my life.” During her time off, Beyoncé had plenty of time not only to think about her parents, but also to take stock of her own life. What she came to realize was that she had been leading a somewhat inauthentic life for many years, at least since the age of sixteen. “There was a bit of emotion in me missing,” she explained. “The world is so much bigger than people just screaming out your name, and that becomes a sort of fake world . . . it’s not really who you are.”
Beyoncé cam
e to understand that the only way for her to truly come to terms with what was presently going on in her life was to once and for all strip away all of the artifice that she’d created around the brand “Beyoncé” and bring it into balance with the true Beyoncé Knowles. To one associate, she posed the question, “How can I handle everything going on in my life when I don’t even know who I am yet? I need to get real.” In other words, the time had come to at least consider trying to merge the icon and the woman.
The first step was to contemplate the fate of Sasha Fierce, the character she had created, which had come to embody the Beyoncé brand. Sasha was the doppelgänger in which Beyoncé’s rage had been deposited for years. Things were now changing for her, though. She told friends that she was bored and even frustrated by the double identity, that she felt it was “false” and now wanted to start over again without it. She had begun to resent not being able to personally express her anger, her sexuality, and everything else that had been more easily articulated by the alter ego. That she only began to feel this way after her mother filed for divorce seems to be no accident. She was always influenced by Tina, and if Tina was finally finding her true voice, maybe it was time for Beyoncé to do the same.
Thus in 2010 the time came for her to finally kill off Sasha Fierce. It was time for Beyoncé to seek authenticity in all aspects of her life. “She knew that the only way she could deal with the confusion of her father’s actions and her mother’s sorrow was to come to a fuller understanding of herself,” said one person close to her. “After all, how could she understand them if she couldn’t understand herself? It wouldn’t happen overnight, but the process had begun.”
“My personal retreat gave me strength and a creative reawakening,” Beyoncé said in recalling her time of contemplation and restoration, the break in her career in 2010. “I returned refreshed, renewed, and empowered to reevaluate my life and do things that will make a difference.”
In retrospect, it could be argued that Beyoncé’s great miscalculation at this time was in advertising to the media the death of Sasha Fierce, thereby turning her demise into a talking point in press interviews. “Sasha Fierce is done,” she told a reporter for Allure magazine. “I killed her. I don’t need her any more because I’ve grown, and I’m able to merge the two personas.” To the Associated Press she said, “I’m a new person, a different woman. Beyoncé is more courageous, I think, than Sasha Fierce ever was, and maybe bolder.” To United Press International she said, “ ‘Sasha Fierce’ is over. I’m different, now.”
Killing off Sasha Fierce had been a proactive response from a person who’d spent her entire adult life as an icon and was finally feeling the vacancy of that existence. Beyoncé killed Sasha because she finally realized that the character wasn’t a panacea for the existential crisis she’d been experiencing of late. But in advertising as much in the media, she risked turning the transformative experience into just another gimmick. As far as most of her public was concerned, the invention and then killing off of Sasha Fierce were both the same: performance art. Only Beyoncé would be privy to all of the important personal ramifications of finally abandoning her alter ego, which in the end was probably just as it should have been.
Mystery at Parkwood
It was February 2011 and Beyoncé had just returned to New York after attending the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles. She had told her makeup artist, Billy B., “Tonight, I’m going as Mrs. Carter, not Beyoncé,” meaning she wanted low-key makeup so as not to upstage Jay who would end up a multiple-winner, including two Grammys for “Empire State of Mind.” Now back in Manhattan, she was anxious to get back to work.
As an artist, Beyoncé was almost always thinking of new concepts for songs, for video shoots, photo layouts, and concerts. However, there were other matters on the table at this time that needed to be resolved before she could continue with her career. Now she was sequestered with her attorneys and accountants in a conference room of her Parkwood Entertainment office. She’d been in constant communication with them for the last few weeks, suggesting to some observers that there might be great change in the air. True to her discreet nature, Beyoncé was not forthcoming about it. Even those closest to her—some of whom had been at Parkwood for years—weren’t sure what was happening. A few thought there was a secret new album in the works, or possibly a forthcoming tour announcement. There was even a rumor that she and Jay were about to go on the road together.
In fact, Parkwood employees are often in the dark about what is going on with the boss. Beyoncé always keeps a tight rein on information, allowing only those with an urgent need to know the details of whatever secret project happens to be in the works. A constant refrain at Parkwood has people asking one another, “Do you have any idea?” Often, no one has a clue. When they eventually do find out what has been going on behind the scenes, it’s often a big surprise and is viewed as yet another Parkwood adventure. No one holds Beyoncé’s secretive nature against her. They all realize that it’s in their best interest if they don’t know exactly what’s going on, especially if it’s supposed to be a secret.
One thing was true, though, and everyone at Parkwood knew it. The weeks before this date, February 13, felt stressful. Beyoncé clearly hadn’t been herself. She was sad, she was distracted, and she was short with people. At one point, some observers speculated that Beyoncé was pregnant. At least that would explain her moodiness, which was strange and even off-putting. Expecting a baby wouldn’t, however, explain the recent rash of meetings with attorneys and accountants, all of whom would arrive at Parkwood with solemn faces and then depart looking even more grim. With the passing of time, it was obvious that the joyous announcement of a pregnancy was not to be in the offing, especially when one day she slipped up in an elevator and told someone, “I’m protecting what it took me twenty years to build.” It was a puzzling statement, upon which she did not elaborate.
On that same day, Tina came in to Parkwood to see her daughter. The two stayed in Beyoncé’s office for two hours. When she emerged, Tina seemed just a little worse for wear. “This is a very strange time for the family,” she told one of Beyoncé’s inquiring colleagues in the lobby. “So much is about to change, it’s hard to wrap my mind around it.” When asked to elaborate, she shook her head and concluded, “No. I’ve already said too much.” Though the Knowles women were short on detail and big on cryptic statements, it was abundantly clear that a seismic shift was about to occur in their lives.
The Hard Choice
What most people on Beyoncé’s staff didn’t know was that she’d been in the midst of an audit of her father, that its conclusions had come in, and that they didn’t seem to be good. There was speculation that they suggested Mathew might have stolen money from her. Despite his vociferous denials, every decision Beyoncé would now make would have to be in light of these extreme circumstances, and also of course with an eye toward the authenticity she now sought in all aspects of her life.
So how did she really feel? What was the appropriate action to take? Not the people-pleasing move, but for her the right move?
In coming to these conclusions, Beyoncé would no doubt take her time and consider not only her present relationship with Mathew but also everything he had meant to her in the past, and even how he had informed her thinking as a woman. This reflective time must have forced her to grapple with issues concerning not only ambition and loyalty, but the rights of women to stand up for themselves in a male-dominated entertainment industry. Somehow, the long and storied history of how women in her life had crossed swords with Mathew over the years had suddenly become relevant.
As we have seen, throughout her life, Beyoncé had been able to consider Mathew her greatest advocate. However, other women in her life hadn’t been so fortunate in their dealings with him, and Beyoncé now had to view him through that same lens. After all, how many strong, formidable women had she seen go up against him and seemingly lose? Denise Seals and Deborah Laday came to mind, as well as, of
course, Andretta Tillman. The savvy Pamela Luckett had challenged Mathew on several occasions while campaigning for her daughter, LeToya, and also lost. Going back even further, the enterprising Carolyn Davis hadn’t fared well either, when she and her daughter, Ashley, stood up to Mathew. These outspoken, independent women were all, in one way or another—some to a greater degree and some to a lesser—role models of Beyoncé’s.
Then there were her former group members.
When she was younger, Beyoncé may well have viewed all of her fellow singers who disagreed with Mathew as just standing in the way of her own success. She might even have thought of them as naïve and maybe even foolish; they just didn’t know how lucky they were, at least in her youthful opinion. It’s not as if she fought hard for Ashley Davis or Nicki and Nina Taylor, LeToya Luckett, or even LaTavia Roberson. But now, so many years later in 2011, she couldn’t help but reconsider their motives. Now, as an adult, Beyoncé had to wonder: Weren’t these women just standing up for their own goals and desires against Mathew’s different vision . . . and losing?
Making it even more complex was her experience of her father in relation to her mother. She’d spent most of her life watching Tina deal with years of marital discord, culminating with Mathew finally having a child with another woman. It had taken a heavy toll on Tina; Beyoncé was a firsthand witness to her suffering. In fact, many believed she would refer to these dark times in her 2014 song “Ring Off.” In the lyrics, Beyoncé writes about years of crushing disappointment in a marriage and the way they whittled away at self-esteem: “In the mirror you would stare / And say a prayer / Like ‘I wish he said I’m beautiful’ . . . So tired of the lies and trying, fighting, crying.” This pain may have been not only Tina’s experience of Mathew but, as her mother’s loyal daughter, Beyoncé’s as well.
Becoming Beyoncé Page 48
