Vanessa Williams

32 years later, Williams was offered a public apology during the Miss America 2016 pageant for the events. Williams rebounded from the scandal with a successful career as a singer and actress. In 1988, she released her debut studio album The Right Stuff, whose title single saw moderate success as well as "Dreamin'", which peaked at number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States in 1989. Her later studio albums include Everlasting Love (2005), The Real Thing (2009), and Survivor (2024). She made her Broadway debut in 1994 with Kiss of the Spider Woman. In 2002, she starred as The Witch in the revival of Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods that earned her a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical at the 56th Tony Awards. She starred in the revival of Horton Foote's The Trip to Bountiful in 2013, and the ensemble political farce POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive in 2022. In television, Williams has played Wilhelmina Slater on Ugly Betty (2006–2010) for which she was nominated three times for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series; and Renee Perry on Desperate Housewives (2010–2012). Since 2024, she has been starring as Miranda Priestly in the musical The Devil Wears Prada at the Dominion Theatre, London.

Vanessa Lynn Williams was born on March 18, 1963, in Tarrytown, New York, a suburb of New York City. She had a birth announcement that read: "Here she is: Miss America". She was raised nearby in Millwood, New York. A paternal great-great-grandfather was William Fields, an African-American legislator in the Tennessee House of Representatives. Williams is also of English, Welsh, Irish, Finnish, Italian, and Portuguese descent. Her mother Helen Tinch (1939–2024) met her father Milton Augustine Williams Jr. (1934–2006) while both were music education students at Fredonia State Teachers College in the late 1950s. They became elementary school music teachers in separate districts after marriage. Milton also served as the assistant principal of his school for an extended period of time. Williams was raised Catholic, the religion of her father. Her mother, who had been raised Baptist, converted to Catholicism when she married. Williams was baptized at Our Lady of Grace Church in the Bronx. Her mother played the organ at St. Theresa's Church in Briarcliff Manor for weddings and at Mass, and Williams used to assist her mother by turning the pages of sheet music. Williams and her younger brother Chris Williams, who later became an actor, grew up in Westchester County, a predominantly white middle to upper-class suburb of New York City. Williams believes she may have been the first African-American student to go from the first grade to the 12th grade in the Chappaqua Central School District. She attended Robert E. Bell Middle School, as did her children years later. Williams revealed that the shop and home economics teachers, Mr. and Mrs. Fink, were still there when her children attended. A child of music teachers, Williams grew up in a musical household, studying classical and jazz dance, French horn, piano, and violin. She was offered the Presidential Scholarship for Drama to attend Carnegie Mellon University during the college application period, one of 12 students to receive it, but decided instead to attend Syracuse University on a different scholarship. In 1981, Williams joined Syracuse's College of Visual and Performing Arts, Department of Drama as a musical theater major. She stayed at Syracuse through her second year until she was crowned Miss America 1984 in September 1983. In May 2008, Syracuse granted Williams a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. According to Syracuse News, "Williams earned the remaining credits for her degree through industry experience and her substantial performances on stage and screen." Williams delivered the 2008 convocation address, telling Syracuse seniors to "treasure this moment. These days are irreplaceable and are the beginning of the rest of your life."

Williams is most often publicly recognized simply as "Vanessa Williams." There is occasional confusion with the similarly named actress Vanessa E. Williams. It has been reported that Vanessa L. became aware of Vanessa E. in the 1980s when the New York University registrar told her that another, similarly aged student with the same name and from the same state had applied. When Williams appeared as Miss America in a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Vanessa E. accidentally received her cheque for the appearance, which she returned. In the area of acting, the two ran into name conflict when Screen Actors Guild rules prohibited duplicate stage naming. Vanessa E. had registered the name "Vanessa Williams" first, so as a compromise, Williams was occasionally credited as "Vanessa L. Williams" in acting credits. To compound the confusion, both actresses starred in versions of the drama Soul Food, Williams in the film version, and Vanessa E. in its TV series adaptation. The Screen Actors Guild eventually took the issue to arbitration, and decided both actresses could use the professional name "Vanessa Williams".

Williams was the first African-American recipient of the Miss America title when she was crowned Miss America 1984 on September 17, 1983. Several weeks before the end of her reign, a scandal arose when Penthouse magazine bought nude photographs of her and published them without Williams' consent. In the summer of '82 she also posed for another photographer, Greg Whitman, who sent a telegram to Bob Guccione offering more nude photographs of Williams, after he heard photographer Tom Chiapel's pictures had been sold to Penthouse. The photographer said in an interview that she signed a release on the pictures. Williams claimed, people wouldn't forgive a second mistake. Williams was pressured to relinquish her title in July 1984 and was succeeded by the first runner-up: Miss New Jersey 1983 Suzette Charles. Thirty-two years later in September 2015, when Williams served as head judge for the Miss America 2016 pageant, former Miss America CEO Sam Haskell made a public apology to her for the events of 1984.

Williams first received public recognition for her musical abilities when she won the preliminary talent portion of the Miss America pageant with her rendition of "Happy Days Are Here Again" (Williams would later be crowned Miss America 1984). Four years later in 1988, Williams released her debut album, The Right Stuff. The first single, "The Right Stuff", found success on the R&B chart, while the second single, "He's Got the Look", found similar success on the same chart. The third single, "Dreamin'", was a pop hit, becoming Williams' first top 10 hit on the 1989 Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 8, and her first number one single on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. The album reached gold status in the U.S. and earned her an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding New Artist and three Grammy Award nominations, including one for Best New Artist at the 31st Grammy Awards. Her 1991 second album The Comfort Zone became the biggest success in her music career. The lead single "Running Back to You" reached top twenty on the Hot 100, and the top position of Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart on October 5, 1991. Other singles included "The Comfort Zone" (number 2 R&B), "Just for Tonight" (number 26 Pop), a cover of The Isley Brothers' "Work to Do" (number 3 R&B), and the club-only hit "Freedom Dance (Get Free!)". The most successful single from the album, as well as her biggest hit to date, is "Save the Best for Last". It reached No. 1 in the United States, where it remained for five weeks, as well as No. 1 in Australia, the Netherlands, and Canada, and was in the top 5 in Japan, on the Irish Singles Chart and the UK Singles Chart. The album sold 2.2 million copies in the U.S. at its time of release and has since been certified triple platinum in the United States by the RIAA, gold in Canada by the CRIA, and platinum in the United Kingdom by the BPI. Williams performed the song live at the 1993 Grammy Awards. The Comfort Zone earned Williams five Grammy Award nominations. The Sweetest Days, her third album, was released in 1994 to highly favorable reviews. The album saw Williams branch out and sample other styles of music that included jazz, hip hop, rock, and Latin-themed recordings such as "Betcha Never" and "You Can't Run", both written and produced by Babyface. Other singles from the album included the adult-contemporary and dance hit "The Way That You Love" and the title track. The album was certified platinum in the U.S. by the RIAA and earned her two Grammy Award nominations. Other releases include two Christmas albums, Star Bright in 1996, and Silver & Gold in 2004, as well as Next in 1997, Everlasting Love in 2005, and The Real Thing in 2009, along with Greatest Hits: The First Ten Years, a greatest hits compilation released in 1998, and a number of other compilations released over the years. Chart performances from subsequent albums, motion picture and television soundtracks have included the songs "Love Is", which was a duet with Brian McKnight, the Golden Globe- and Academy Award-winning "Colors of the Wind", "Where Do We Go from Here?", and "Oh How the Years Go By". In 1996, Williams performed the national anthem at Super Bowl XXX. In April 2018, she announced she was working on a new studio album due in the fall that would incorporate her R&B, pop, & Broadway influences. On April 26, 2024, Williams released a new single, "Legs (Keep Dancing)", the first from her ninth studio album, Survivor, which was released on August 23, 2024. Williams launched her own record label, Mellian Music, for the release. On May 13, 2024, the digital single "Legs (Keep Dancing)" debuted on the US Dance/Electronic Digital Song Sales (Billboard) chart in the number 3 position. The single's success marks Williams' first hit on the Dance/Electronic Digital Song Sales chart. In July 2024, Williams released the single "Bop!", a collaboration with Trixie Mattel and Lion Babe. Vanessa Williams has surpassed 250 million total streams on Spotify across all credits. She averages nearly 190K daily listeners on the platform.

Williams began her career on stage in the 1985 production, One Man Band, as one of "the women". She followed it in 1989 as Laura in Ron Milner's Checkmates. In 1994, she broadened her ascendant music career into a theatrical role when she replaced Chita Rivera as Aurora in the Broadway production of Kiss of the Spider Woman. In 1998, she portrayed Della Green in the revival of St. Louis Woman, and Carmen Jones in the 2002 Kennedy Center Special Performance of Carmen Jones. In the same year, she was also featured in the Tony and Drama Desk Award-winning revival production of Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical at the 56th Tony Awards and a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical for her performance as the Witch. This production included songs revised for her. In 2010, Vanessa starred in a new Broadway musical revue entitled Sondheim on Sondheim, a look at Stephen Sondheim through his music, film and videotaped interviews. Sondheim ran from March 19 to June 13 at Studio 54 in New York City. In 2013, she starred as Jessie Mae Watts in the Horton Foote play The Trip to Bountiful, which was later turned into a 2014 television film. In 2014, she starred in the Broadway musical, After Midnight and in 2015, she appeared in a PBS production of Show Boat as Julie La Verne. Williams starred as Margaret in POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive on Broadway, with performances that began on April 14, 2022, at the Shubert Theatre. Wi In February, 2024 Williams was cast to play the role of Miranda Priestly, in a stage production of the Devil Wears Prada at the Dominion Theatre in London's West End.

Williams served as the host of the 1994 Essence Awards, co-host of Carnegie Hall Salutes the Jazz Masters: Verve Records at 50, host of the 1998 NAACP Image Awards, host of the 2002 documentary, It's Black Entertainment, host of The 6th Annual TV Land Awards in 2007, host of the 36th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards in 2009, and host of the documentary Dreams Come True: A Celebration of Disney Animation in 2009. Williams is a spokesmodel for Proactiv Solution, and was the first African-American spokesmodel for L'Oréal cosmetics in the 1990s. In 2018, Williams returned as a spokesmodel for L'Oréal as part of their "Age Perfect" campaign alongside fellow ambassadors Helen Mirren, Julianne Moore, and Jane Fonda. In 2000, she appeared on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire as a contestant, and again in August 2009, as a celebrity guest during the show's tenth anniversary prime-time special editions, winning $50,000 for her charity. In a commercial that began running during Super Bowl XLVI in 2012, Williams voiced the new character Ms. Brown, a brown M&M. In 2020, Williams was the winner of season 1, episode 2 of RuPaul's Secret Celebrity Drag Race, and donated her prize of $20,000 to the LGBTQ charity The Trevor Project.

Williams and her mother Helen co-authored a memoir titled You Have No Idea, published in April 2012. In the book, Williams discusses her childhood, rise to fame, and personal struggles, including life with type 1 diabetes and that she was sexually molested by a woman when she was ten years old. She spoke candidly about having an abortion while she was in high school. Williams is a practising Catholic, something she spoke about on the ABC News program Focus on Faith with Fr Edward L. Beck. Williams has been married three times. She married Ramon Hervey II at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in 1987 just a few years after giving up her Miss America crown and gave birth to her first child at that time. Hervey was a public relations specialist who was hired to resuscitate her career after her resignation. They had three children, including Jillian. They divorced in 1997. She married NBA basketball player Rick Fox in 1999. They had one daughter, Sasha Gabriella Fox. They divorced in 2004. In 2015, she married Jim Skrip, a businessman from Buffalo, New York, at St. Stanislaus Catholic Church, after receiving a Church annulment of her first marriage. The couple divorced in 2021. In 2013, she was in an episode of Who Do You Think You Are? to learn about her background. According to the DNA test results, she is 23% Ghanaian, 17% British, 15% Cameroonian, 12% Finnish, 11% Southern-European, 7% Togolese, 6% Beninese, 5% Senegalese and 4% Portuguese.

Williams is involved with several humanitarian causes. In 2011, participated in the human rights campaign New Yorkers for Marriage Equality. She currently sits on the board of The Sheen Center for Thought and Culture, a creative arts space run by the Catholic Archdiocese. She is partnered with Dress For Success, an organization that provides professional attire for low-income women seeking employment. Williams is also involved with The San Miquel Academy of Newburgh, a school for boys at risk.

The Right Stuff (1988) The Comfort Zone (1991) The Sweetest Days (1994) Star Bright (1996) Next (1997) Silver & Gold (2004) Everlasting Love (2005) The Real Thing (2009) Survivor (2024)