Adele during her interview with Oprah Winfrey
(Picture: CBS)Adele sat down with Oprah Winfrey in a candid two-hour special on Sunday (14 November) – and no topics were off limits. The exclusive interview covered everything from reconciling with her father, her weight loss journey and the exact moment she knew she wanted a divorce from ex-husband Simon Konecki.
The show then hosted a pre-recorded live performance from the singer, featuring never heard before tracks from 30, Adele’s new album, which is being released next week.
Here are some of the highlights from the interview:
On weight loss: “It’s not my job to validate how people feel about their bodies”
There’s been much speculation over the 33-year-old’s weight loss over the past two years. The Someone Like You singer told Winfrey that it wasn’t her intention to drop almost 100lbs (45kg) and that she had always been body-positive.
“My body has been objectified my entire career, I’m too big, I’m too small, I’m hot or I’m not,” she said.
“I never looked up to anyone because of their weight. I’m body positive then and I’m body positive now. But it’s not my job to validate how people feel about their bodies. I feel bad if anyone feels horrible about themselves but that’s not my job. I’m trying to sort my own life out.
“I can’t have another worry.”
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On divorce: “I’m embarrassed I didn’t make my marriage work”
What marks the first time she spoke about the divorce publicly, Adele said she is “embarrassed” about her split from ex-husband Simon Konecki and revealed to Winfrey they do not talk about her highly anticipated new album, despite remaining friends.
“I’m just embarrassed I didn’t make my marriage work,” she told Winfrey, calling the divorce process and “turning up for yourself”, “exhausting”.
Despite the split, she and Konecki remain on good terms, living across the street from each other in Los Angeles.
Her six-year-old son thinks Taylor Swift is the biggest star
Adele’s son couldn’t believe how many people were in the audience at Taylor Swift’s Reputation stadium tour in 2018.
“He used to come to my stadium shows for rehearsals, and it’d be empty,” Adele laughed.
It wasn’t until the release of Easy On Me that he realised his mum’s popularity. “The other day, he watched the Easy On Me video countdown... and he was like, ‘There was 150,000 people waiting!’ Then he read the comments and he was like, ‘People really like you!’.
“So he’s starting to get it a little bit, but not really.”
Adele’s new song, Hold On, could be the new “national anthem”
Adele premiered three upcoming songs from her new album 30 – I Drink Wine, Love Is A Game and Hold On.
Speaking ahead of the star-studded performance, Winfrey said her new track, Hold On, could become the new “national anthem throughout the world for anybody struggling with anything”.
“That song is so beautiful and poignant,” she added.
She reconciled with her dad before he died
Adele said the loss of her father Mark Evans to cancer in May and her final conversation with him had “set her free”.
“I don’t think I understood the true deepness of how I felt about my dad until we spoke,” she said.
“I think I’ve never been fully in any of my relationships.
“I always had this fear from a really young age that you’re going to leave me anyway, so I’m going to leave or I’m not going to invest myself in anything.”
Referring to her father’s death she added: “It was like I let out one wail and something left. I’ve felt so calm ever since then. It really did set little me free.”
She told Rolling Stone that since the death she had reconnected with US sports agent Rich Paul, for the most “incredible, open-hearted and easiest” relationship she had been in.
“I’m not frightened of loneliness any more,” she said.
She recalls the exact moment she knew she wanted a divorce - “through a boujie magazine”
Adele also revealed that she realised wanted a divorce during a conversation with friends.
“We were all answering these questions in this very boujie magazine, and it was something like, ‘What’s something that no one would ever know about you?’ 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 said.
“I admitted to my own friends who thought I was really happy that actually I’m really unhappy, and they were all aghast.”
Her ex-husband “saved her life”
Despite the divorce, Adele stressed that she still loves her ex even if she’s not “in love” with him.
She addressed that Konecki saved her life after she became famous. “At that time in my life, I was so young and I think I would have got in all of it. I could easily gone down some dodgy paths and self-destructed from being so overwhelmed by all of it,” she told Winfrey.
“And he came in and was the most stable person I’d ever had in my life up until that point. Even now I trust them with my life.”
She noted that the pair live opposite each other in Los Angeles and co-parent their son Angelo.
