Adele and Oprah discuss single parenthood and objectification in new TV special
Adele told Oprah she 'wasn't surprised' by the public reaction to her weight loss
By Jen Thomas
Adele has discussed her experiences of single parenthood and objectification during a sit down interview with Oprah Winfrey ahead of the release of her latest album ’30’.
Oprah and Adele sat in the same garden spot as Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s televised interview earlier this year.
As well as the interview there was a pre-recorded concert from the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, which saw her airing several of the new songs, including ‘I Drink Wine’ and ‘Love Is A Game’, and a full version of ‘Hold On’ that had been teased.
Talking about her recent weight loss, Adele revealed she wasn’t surprised by the public response.
“I’m not shocked or even phased by [people’s reactions] because my body has been objectified my entire career.”
She added: “I was body-positive then and I’m body-positive now. It’s not my job to validate how people feel about their bodies. … I’m trying to sort my own life out.”
Adele also talked about the support of her friends during her darkest times, which inspired the lyrics to ‘Hold On’, following her divorce from charity entrepreneur Simon Konecki in 2019.
Oprah read some of the lyrics to Adele, which she referred to as “dark”, prompting the singer to reply: “My friends always would say, ‘Hold on’ when I would feel like the lyrics in the verse. But it was just exhausting trying to keep going with it. It’s a process. You know, the process of a divorce, the process of being a single parent.
“The process of not seeing your child every single day wasn’t really a plan that I had when I became a mum,” she added. “The process of arriving for yourself every day, turning up for yourself every single day and still running a home, running a business.”
Adele also talked about her “embarrassment” over the divorce, and disappointment with herself.
“I’ve been obsessed with a nuclear family my whole life because I never came from one. I from a very young age promised myself that when I had kids, that we’d stay together. We would be that united family.
“I was so disappointed for my son, I was so disappointed for myself, I just thought I was going to be the one that stopped doing those bloody patterns all the time.”
She also shared the moment she realised her marriage was over.
“We were all answering these questions in this very bougie magazine, and it was something like, ‘What’s something that no one would ever know about you?’” she said.
“And I just said it in front of three of my friends, I was like, ‘I’m really not happy. I’m not living, I’m just plodding along.'”
She referred to a lyric from ‘Love in the Dark’, from her ’25’ album: “I want to live and not just survive.”
“I definitely felt like that,” she explained.
“And it was when I admitted to my own friends, who thought I was really happy, that actually I’m really unhappy, and they were all aghast. I felt like it was sort of, from there, that I was like, what am I doing it for?”
She also revealed that her ex-husband understood that the divorce would be addressed on the new album.
“He knows what kind of artist I am, that I have to dig deep and tell my stories,” she insisted.
A separate performance recorded at the London Palladium to a star-studded crowd including Samuel L Jackson, Stormzy and Emma Watson is due to air on ITV on Sunday.