Photographer Annie Leibovitz shot the spread of Rihanna for the magazine, and Rihanna was interviewed by Jonathan Van Meter, who took her to a Los Angeles Clippers vs. Miami Heat basketball game at Staples Centre.
LOS ANGELES, California – Watching Rihanna work her way through the crowds at the Staples Centre one Wednesday night in January, during a Los Angeles Clippers vs. Miami Heat basketball game, is a bit like watching a purebred, prizewinning Abyssinian wander into a coyote den. Perfectly nice gentlemen turn into eye-popping, lip-smacking cartoons of their former selves, practically tripping over one another as she struts past in skintight blue jeans and nude Louboutins, her Little Red Riding Hood hair grazing the top of the dark sunglasses that cover those glossy hazel eyes.
By the time we descend into the arena and get to our courtside seats, it’s a safe bet that thousands of people are aware that the pop star is seated among them. Her hair is the opposite of a disguise; indeed, it is a neon beacon in a sea of colour and noise. Before long the cameramen find her, and within seconds her face is on the Jumbotron, sending a wave of murmurs – rihannarihannarihanna – rippling through the rows. When she realizes she is glowing huge on the screen above us, she takes off her sunglasses, flashes that sweet smile, and waves to the cheering fans.
All eyes may be on Rihanna, but during breaks in the game – in which she is deeply engrossed, cheering loudest for LeBron James and Dwyane Wade – she herself turns her laser beams on the crowd. A woman in a fur walks by, and I get a gentle elbow in the ribs. “Check her ouwt,” she says, one eyebrow cocked in bemusement, her Barbadian accent suddenly very pronounced. “Do you really think she needs to be wearing a full-length fur coat to a basketball game when it’s 70 degrees outside?”
Tough and guarded
Rihanna creates an instant conspiratorial intimacy as she shares her big tub of popcorn and dissects the crowd. During a break, she draws my attention to a security guard on the court. “This poor guy looks so worried.” And then: “Let’s try to make him laugh.” She stares at him long and hard, and when he finally catches her eye he looks startled at first. But then slowly, a bashful smile creeps across his face, which quickly gives way to laughter. Score!
Her perceptiveness in some ways acts as a shield, because as provocative as Rihanna can be, there is something tough and guarded about her. As her label chairman and CEO, L.A. Reid, says: “She became a star before she became an adult. Her nature is to protect herself.” At the game, for instance, what the cameras and fans can’t see is the very fine gold chain around her neck with a teeny-tiny expletive word charm.
It is exactly this aspect of her personality – the playful badass – that landed Rihanna her first acting gig, a role in Battleship, the $200 million summer action movie based on the Hasbro game and directed by the actor turned director Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights). Also starring Liam Neeson, Alexander Skarsgård, and Brooklyn Decker, the film follows an American fleet that encounters an armada helmed by aliens and engages in a no-doubt totally awesome, save-the-world battle at sea (not scheduled to be released until May 2012).
Berg was looking for an actress who could play the “tough, urban, scrappy, funny” naval officer Cora Raikes, and “for some reason,” he says, “Rihanna popped into my head.” He was initially intrigued by her video persona.
“But when you meet her,” he says, “there’s absolutely no resemblance to the sexy superdiva that you see in the videos. It’s a complete act, in my opinion. I am not saying she’s not a very sexy girl, but there’s so much more to her than that. She is clearly playing around with a character.” And then he saw the hilarious Saturday Night Live “Shy Ronnie” skit in which she appeared with Andy Samberg last year.
“I thought, Wow, this girl is just an inherent performer,” Berg says. He believes his gamble will pay off. “She has a very strong presence – people are going to be surprised,” he says. “Let’s put it this way: She kicks ass.”
To play a gun-toting ammunitions specialist, Rihanna had to look like she knew a thing or two about how to fire an M4, not to mention be comfortable filming on a barge fourteen hours a day off the coast of Hawaii. “She had to get into an eighteen-foot inflatable raft and sit behind a machine gun for six hours at a time in seven-foot swells,” says Berg. “We had rescue swimmers on Jet Skis and armed shark spotters because there were quite a few sharks out there.”
Rihanna enjoyed every scary minute of it. “There were all these people, cameras, and huge cranes out in the middle of the ocean,” she says. “And I got to do some stunts, which was incredible. I loved it – especially diving into the ocean.”
Needless to say, Rihanna had to get in the best physical shape of her young life. She is no longer the sixteen-year-old ingenue who can eat whatever she wants (which, if left to her own devices, would be junk food and pasta). But luckily her trainer, Ary Nuñez, a Nike-sponsored athlete with several black belts, is there to keep those multimillion-dollar “guns and gams” camera-ready.
Though Rihanna has the kind of Amazon body some women would kill for, she says she has only recently become content with her shape. “Over the holidays, and even during filming, I realized that I actually like my body, even if it’s not perfect according to the book. I just feel sexy. For the first time, I don’t want to get rid of the curves. I just want to tone it up. My body is comfortable, and it’s not unhealthy, so I’m going to rock with it.”
Along with the killer body (and of course that bewitching voice), it is Rihanna’s daring – and unerring – sense of style that has catapulted her out of the ranks of interchangeable one-name R&B singers. I see it for myself a couple of nights after the game, when Rihanna meets me in Beverly Hills for dinner at Scarpetta, an Italian restaurant she loves. She is wearing a tight, short salmon-coloured dress from Topshop that has strategically placed cutouts with those same nude Louboutins. In other words, she looks like the Only Girl (in the World).
Rihanna has become nothing less than a fashion It girl. Bloggers and editors go crazy over her looks, whether it’s the fuchsia cropped sweater she paired with tangerine pedal-pushers in London or the Dolce & Gabbana tuxedo with wildly exaggerated shoulders she chose to wear to the Met Costume Institute gala.
Rihanna tells Vogue that since she and the writer last met her relationship with her father has gone from bad to worse, as he has sold out to a tabloid, airing dirty laundry and giving the rights to publish some of her childhood photographs.“It really makes me question what I have become to my father. Like, what do I mean to him?”
During the interview, the writer points out how, at this point in their conversation, the Barbados beauty looks away for a moment, and there are tears running down her cheeks.(Reprinted from Vogue Magazine.)
