Destiny’s Child has long cemented itself as one of the most endearing girl groups of all time, but there was once a time when even Beyoncé, Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams were a little starstruck.
During a recent appearance on Keke Palmer‘s “Baby This Is Keke Palmer” podcast, Williams shared that not only does she agree with Palmer on a few things, like not living with your spouse or significant other, but she also opened up about how a living legend gave her and her Destiny’s Child groupmates the advice of a lifetime.
“Whitney Houston,” Williams said. “We met her in the hotel lobby and she started singing ‘Say My Name.’ It was myself, Beyoncé and Kelly. Um, back in the day, it was the Hotel Nico in Los Angeles. But she was like, “Y’all stay together. Y’all just… y’all, y’all stay together.”
The moment was such a high for Williams that all she could do was go back to her hotel room and wonder, did that really happen? Did Whitney Houston, a pop and R&B diva of all divas, sing their song?
“I went in my hotel room, got a pillow, and screamed,” Williams said, recalling the moment as if it just happened yesterday.
During her early days in DC, Williams and the group found themselves in several viral moments before things truly went viral, including one Dutch interview in 2001 that longtime fans still believe the trio was high during. As Palmer explored how touring can take a physical and mental toll on the body, Williams recalled that infamous interview and set the record straight.
“I promise y’all Mathew and Tina Knowles was not playing that. We were not under the influence of any substance,” Williams told Palmer. “We were ti-erd. Tired and grateful. We were really tired. I promise you, there were no edibles, it was literally jet lag … Media training is great, but when you’re tired, or you’re feeling disrespected, you can’t hide it.”
The interview, which was conducted by Dutch music channel Toazted, routinely comes up in memes, particularly one segment where the group is asked which animal they would be with Beyoncé saying a whale because she’s always loved whales, Rowland picking a bird “because they can fly” and Williams landing on a black panther.
Despite their last album dropping in 2005 and the group being on hiatus for twenty-plus years, the trio still gets calls for the occasional reunion. The last time DC3 graced the stage together was during the Las Vegas stop of the “Cowboy Carter Tour” last July. But Williams, whose life has been in the public eye for more than 25 years, has some things she’s willing to keep private: namely, her relationships.
Williams was engaged to pastor Chad Johnson in 2018, but later called off the engagement to prioritize her mental health. Their journey was part of an OWN reality series, “Chad Loves Michelle.” Now the singer says she’ll be a “grandmother” long before the public knows who she is dating or in a relationship with.
“I’ll be very careful on personally posting things or doing reality shows,” Williams said of her love life. “There are certain decisions that I made that I would not do again. Especially the audacity to think I’m trying to figure out for relationships for reality shows. I could be wrong, but how has it worked out for people … people do it for a myriad of reasons. We did it because we thought we could show people something.”
