Megan Thee Stallion knows her fans are growing impatient. So is she. While I wait for her at New York’s Ludlow House on a perfect July Sunday, she’s on X, assuring the hotties—her fiercely loyal fan base—that Act III is coming soon. “I really appreciate how passionate they are, and it makes me feel good knowing that I have a fan base that cares about rap as much as I do,” she says when she arrives. “They’re very serious about my career.”

She’d wanted to give them another Hot Girl Summer. Instead, she spent much of the season in Miami with her producers, recording and rewriting until the album felt right. “I was very sad because I came to the realization that I was not gonna drop a summer album,” she says. “I wanted to take my time and record and really write and figure it out.”

We’re seated at two tables in front of the curtained screen of Ludlow House’s otherwise empty private cinema. Her bodyguard is just down the hall, eating lunch at a table facing the open door of the theater; her publicist and a patient waiter hover nearby. “I feel like I’m happy about this album, even though it didn’t come [out] in the summertime. But that’s okay, because it’s Tina Snow,” she adds, referring to her Pimp C– inspired alter ego.

The album is one reason she’s in New York this weekend. She’s here to put the finishing touches on it, with hopes of releasing it soon. But all that work should also come with a little bit of fun: She spent the previous two nights in the Bronx, attending Jay-Z’s Yankee Stadium shows. The second night turned into a bit of a rager for Meg, who didn’t get back to her hotel until dawn.

“When I go out, I have to make it a movie because I barely get the chance
to go out,” she says. After the show, she ended up at a comedy club with her friends (“I was like, ‘Wow, this what y’all are saying in the New York comedy club?’ They better not put that on social media!”). “New York is giving Alice in Wonderland,” she says of the nightlife scene. “You could end up going through a washing machine and end up in a club.”

Looking at the glammed-up rapper, you couldn’t tell that her weekend plans had led her down a late-night rabbit hole. Her makeup is flawless as ever, with a glowy matte finish. Her cropped gray T-shirt bears the word LUXURY, displayed like a baseball-team logo, revealing her enviable abs. She pairs it with a Yankees cap, ripped skinny jeans, a chrome Louis Vuitton monogram bag, and a pair of strappy heels that add several inches to her 5’10” frame. She looks like she’s ready for another night out, but all she really wants is lunch.

“I’m hungry,” she says, the first real tell of the night before. She’s low-energy but not disengaged, ordering a grapefruit juice for herself and spinach artichoke dip for us to share.

Given the year Megan has had, a late night followed by a quiet recovery lunch feels well-earned. Her career hit a massive turning point this year as she expanded her brand and name outside of rap. She’s been exploring her creative side, making her Broadway debut as Zidler in Moulin Rouge! The Musical and appearing as Daniel Radcliffe’s love interest, a divorced mail carrier named Denise, on the NBC series The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins. She even took a role in the Adam Sandler–produced Netflix film Roommates, as a prisoner named Louise. And beyond entertainment, the business of being a hot girl never stops. She opened her first Popeyes franchise in Miami’s South Beach at the start of the year and launched a Hot Girl Summer perfume.

For all that expansion, though, music remains a nonnegotiable. “I don’t ever see a world in which I [leave] music or let music be the backseat to anything I do,” the 31-year-old says, in case her fans were worried that the Act III delay meant she was pivoting away from it. “I don’t want to ever be just a product or an artist that doesn’t feel relatable. I am a person at the end of the day. I want to resonate with people. I feel like that’s how you have longevity, when you really connect with your audience.”

After a year in which the demands of being Megan Thee Stallion have repeatedly collided with the needs of the person underneath, that distinction feels like a necessity. Both Megan’s health and love life took massive hits this year, and she’s just starting to piece them all together again. “No matter what’s going on, I always pick myself up and go, ‘Girl, hot-girl shit,’" she says. And she doesn’t wish away those parts either. “I was supposed to learn. I was supposed to grow. I was supposed to do all the things, from my best moments and my worst moments,” she says. “I was supposed to go through that, learn from it, and survive it. It’s hard sometimes to get up and keep going, but I have to.” Clearly, she has.

This spring, Megan was in New York for what was scheduled to be an eight-week run as Zidler in Moulin Rouge! The Musical. The show's emcee doubles as the owner of the titular club, and Megan was the first female-identifying actor to play the role. It was an honor for the theater fan, who had dabbled in performing back in college. “It was one of the best experiences, as a performer, in my life,” she says, adding that she had been nervous going into it. She knows how to perform as Megan Thee Stallion every day, on tour and off—but in this role, she needed to be prepared to slip into another character eight times a week.

“I don’t think I was aware of how much I was going to be putting my body through,” she admits. When she’s in Stallion mode, she’s already pretty strict with herself. She’s never late for her shows and always tries to do everything— recording, touring, visuals—to the best of her abilities. But Broadway was a whole new experience. Megan was working alongside a cast and crew who had been putting on this show for years, and for the first time, she was just one part of a much larger machine. “These people are working hard, like anybody in theater,” she says. “They’re working all week except for Mondays. I know they tired. Like, when I walked in that bitch, I be tired. And they be so happy and just upbeat. I stopped complaining.”

Kelsie Watts, who played Satine in the production, remembers having multiple conversations with Megan during rehearsals and the first week of their run together about how overwhelmed the Grammy winner was. “She was burning the candle at both ends,” Watts says. “If she wasn’t in rehearsals, then she was going to work on her album, or she was going to do press or a photo shoot. A lot of people don’t realize, eight shows a week is just different. Until you do it, you can’t describe it, but it’s really freaking hard, and I think she was just exhausted.”

Megan gave her first performance in Moulin Rouge! on March 24 to an audience full of her passionate hotties who had traveled far and wide to see her debut. She was ecstatic, moved, and already growing close with the cast. But the pressure and stress were beginning to take their toll on her physically. During her March 31 performance, just one week into her run, she was rushed to the hospital.

“I didn’t want to let anyone down,” she says. Her eyes have begun welling up, and she dabs them carefully with a napkin as she recalls the incident. At the time, Megan was aware of how depleted she had become. In spite of the demands of the musical, she hadn’t been eating properly and was dehydrated. She admits she had been showing up to the job every day “a little bit mentally not okay.”

“I thought I was having a stroke,” she says. “I wasn’t getting any oxygen to my brain, so my hands had froze. My face had froze. I was trying to tell everybody that I don’t think I’m okay. They only thought I was dehydrated.”

Watts remembers observing how different Megan looked at the beginning of that performance. “The very first time that we interact is after the song ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,’ and we come out onto what’s called the passerelle. It’s right next to the front row, and we have this little interaction scene with each other. I looked at her, and she had barely any color in her face, was shaking, was sweating, and I was like, ‘This is not normal,’ especially for her and for someone who does work as hard as she does and wants to push through. When I got offstage, I was like, ‘Something’s gonna happen. She’s not okay.’”

The production paused for about 20 minutes. Watts recalls how much convincing it took to get Megan, who wanted to keep performing, to go to the hospital. “She wanted to keep doing the show because she knew that so many hotties were there and so many people were excited to see her, but she had to [go],” Watts says. At the hospital, Megan was exhausted and having a panic attack.

But for someone whose body had just forced her to stop, Megan didn’t stay stopped for long. She was back onstage just two days later and stayed with the show for another month before ending her run two weeks early on May 1. Within months, she was back in the studio.

“I’m definitely trying to stay more hydrated and be more calm,” she says when I ask her how she’s been taking care of herself since. Watts saw some of those changes firsthand: Megan cut her schedule from eight shows a week to seven and stopped packing her days with work outside the theater. On Wednesdays and Saturdays, when Moulin Rouge! puts on two shows a day, Megan and Watts would spend some downtime together between performances, then grab low-key dinners together after the shows.

“It was like a little bit of a better balance instead of her trying to put so much into one day and so much on her plate,” Watts says.

After taking some time to settle back into being Megan Thee Stallion rather than Zidler, she was able to return to the role on very different terms. In June, just over a month after leaving the show, she reprised the character at the Tony Awards, alongside host P!nk. “It was amazing,” she says. “I was so happy.”

But Broadway wasn’t the only thing weighing on Megan that spring. In late April, before announcing her early departure from Moulin Rouge!, Megan took to her Instagram story to announce that she and her then-boyfriend, Dallas Mavericks star Klay Thompson, had ended their relationship.

On Instagram, she accused Thompson of cheating, getting “cold feet” and having “HORRIBLE mood swings” during the basketball season, all while he had her “playing house” with his entire family. She further indicated that Thompson had claimed to her that monogamy might not be for him. In a later statement, she said, “Trust, fidelity and respect are non-negotiable for me in a relationship, and when those values are compromised, there’s no real path forward. I’m taking this time to prioritize myself and move ahead with peace and clarity.”

The pair had gone public with their relationship in 2025 and let the world in on what felt like a romantic fantasy. They posted joint workout videos and pictures of large dinners with Thompson’s family, including meals Megan appeared to have cooked for the entire clan. Last October, she had hinted at the two moving in together, sharing a photo of their two hands forming a heart and holding a set of keys in front of a home.

When I ask how she is thinking about love at this point in her life, she takes a long pause. “I’m not thinking about anything romantic,” she says after ordering more water. “I’m definitely not thinking about no damn relationship.”

It’s clear the subject is still tender. The typically extroverted, bawdy star is quiet, careful, and, again, trying to stave off tears as she speaks. She says she has been letting herself feel it rather than trying to rush past the heartbreak. “I’m not pretending I’m 100 percent okay,” she says. “I ain’t never been through nothing like that in my whole life. I’ve never, ever, ever been in a relationship like that, ever. So I’m definitely not worried about another one for a long time.”

She is still grieving the loss of the future she thought she had found, she adds. “It was so abrupt. I’m in shock still.” But from where she is now, Megan believes she’s better off on her own—and shies away from further details on what transpired.

“When something is meant for you, it’s gonna be easy,” she says. “It’s gonna be right. It’s not gonna feel like a panic all the time. I feel like that’s what I was in, constantly on edge. My nervous system needed to calm down. I feel like I was in a panic 24/7. I’m still not eating all the way right. I’m feeling all the feelings. I’m not trying to take no shortcuts.”

The breakup, she says, was also a reminder to trust her intuition. “Sometimes I be knowing in my gut and in my heart, then you give so much benefit of the doubt,” she says. “No, the gut is always right. Listen.”

We start discussing the onslaught of hard lessons we’ve both experienced in our early 30s, the realization that making it through the messiness of your 20s does not exempt you from entirely new messes. She had spent so much of her life begging God for signs that someone was right for her. At this point, she’s over it. “No more signs,” she laughs. “Send us an email. Call, please! They never, ever stop. Sorry I asked. I ain’t asking for shit right now.”

This year had plenty of hard lessons, but they all taught Megan that she can—and should—take back control of her life. She’s more conscious of how she spends her days: focusing on one job at a time, making art with people she trusts, spending time with people who make her feel safe, and limiting external noise and critique. The only social media apps she has on her phone these days are Pinterest and TikTok. (She only got access to her X account by borrowing her social media manager’s phone earlier in the day.) “I’m not looking at anything anybody is saying, because I would be in my feelings all day,” she says.

“Anything you create, you feel sensitive about. If somebody don’t compliment your food, you’re gonna be upset about that. If you put on an outfit you really put thought into and somebody has something to say, you’ll be like, ‘Damn, I thought my shit was fire.’ I had to realize one of the things that makes me sensitive is social media.”

She’s carefully curated a TikTok algorithm that maintains her peace. Her For You page serves up videos on aliens, the ocean, Frenchies, Dobermans, and mukbangs. She’s big on BookTok too, and she consumes murder mysteries and thrillers on her phone, every free moment she has. “I really love reading, and I’m trying to figure out what I can do in that space,” she says, mulling a book club or a Kindle partnership. “I want to engage the hotties in reading.”

She pulls out her phone, secured inside a teddy-bear-shaped case, to list off her recent favorites: Nita Prose’s The Maid, Alafair Burke’s The Better Sister, anything by Ruth Ware. After picking up One of Us Is Dead, she dove into all of author Jeneva Rose’s work.

“If she is making a movie, please put me in it. Because whatever I gotta do to be a part of that...” Megan says. “That book was so good. I could finish a book in probably like two days. I’m staying through it, top to bottom all day, through glam, through a shoot, on a break, on a plane. I’m finishing the book. That was a good book. Jenny ate that.”

Megan was an early Colleen Hoover fan too but is so offline that she didn’t realize how popular the author’s books had become until the drama around the 2024 film adaptation of It Ends With Us blew up. “I had nobody to talk about it with because none of my friends read these kinds of books,” she says. “I’m keeping up with the movie and the drama. It was tea for me.” Even celebrities escape through other celebrities’ drama.

Her friends may not share her taste in books, but they have been a constant for Megan through a difficult year. As she talks about her chosen family, her face lights up. She does everything with her hairstylist Kellon Deryck. “As soon as I met him, I feel like we just connected instantly, barely any words,” she says. “He read my mind, and I feel like I was reading his.” She considers her manager T. Farris to be family. “He’s like my brother,” she says. “That’s not even a friend, that’s family. After my mama passed, he took me in, and he’s been with me ever since.” Then there’s Jayla, her best friend since college, whom she met back in Houston in 2013. Though Jayla now lives in Dallas, Megan still sees her as a steady, reliable “ride or die.”

With them, she rarely has to ask for support. “When I’m having a bad day, I damn near forget I’m having a bad day because they’re just there, and it just takes my mind off of it immediately,” she adds. That circle has grown alongside her newer creative pursuits, including Watts, who bonded with Megan over their Texas roots while working together on Broadway. The two have kept in touch all summer.

“She FaceTimed me while I was in a show the other day,” Watts says. “Conveniently, it was during intermission. We talked the whole intermission.” On the call, Megan invited her out to Miami to work on a song together after Moulin Rouge! closes in August. “She’s an international superstar. I didn’t expect to make a friend,” Watts adds, noting that Megan had already made plans to come to the closing party for the show. “She is just 100 percent a girl’s girl. What you see is what you get. She’s real. She’s honest. She’s a really hard worker. She’s fun. She’s kind and loving and energetic. She really is what you would want in a friend.”

Megan clearly knows how to find the right work families. She gushes about the entire cast of Reggie Dinkins, especially her primary scene partner, Radcliffe. “I was on that set, calling that man Harry Potter all day,” she exclaims. He clearly took it in stride. “Daniel made me feel so, so, so comfortable. We were literally talking and joking the whole time. I think that’s why the chemistry was so good.”

“We were honestly so lucky to get Megan to be on the show,” Radcliffe says. “Normally, it takes a few seasons for people as famous as she is to guest-star. But Megan dived in and was totally game, from the first moment she stepped on set. She’s a total pro, a delight to work with, and really fucking funny.” Megan had such a good time on set that she’s hoping they call her back for season two. “They have to,” she says. “They did not give my girl enough time. That love story needs to develop.”

Work has pushed Megan hard this year, but the studio also remains a place where she can make sense of what she’s going through—or simply find some relief from it. She unleashes everything through her music, either by explicitly detailing what she is going through in her lyrics or by making songs that allow her to escape in the moment. “I do make music that reflects the way I feel,” she explains. “But I could be having a terrible, terrible, terrible day, and then I would go write something like ‘Freak Nasty’ just because I feel inspired to go write something hard. So in my new album, I feel like I went through all the feelings.”

We barely make a dent in the spinach-artichoke dip before we have to clear out for a screening in the cinema. We move to a small table in the room where her bodyguard had been stationed. “I have the [same] ring,” she says, noticing the giant pink bauble I got from Mondo Mondo now that we’re sitting closer. “The girls don’t have that. They don’t know.”

Once we’re settled, the conversation turns back to Act III. Megan makes it clear there is still a lot left she wants to prove to herself. She says she stopped caring about making people like her after releasing her album Traumazine. “I’m not fighting for validation,” she says. She thinks back to being young, still discovering her voice, and being genuinely unconcerned with what anyone thought. Fame complicated that. At some point, she says, keeping the career she had built began to feel tangled up with keeping everyone on her side. “I just had to learn, when somebody makes their mind up about you, that’s what it is,” she says. “I feel like I was able to be a little more free in making music and making decisions because I feel like, for a long point in life, I was definitely trying to make people like me.”

Working with many of the same people from her recent projects has given her enough familiarity to experiment, and one piece of outside criticism has given that experimentation a target: the claim that every Megan Thee Stallion song has the same flow. “I think I have such a distinct voice, such a distinct sound, such a distinct accent. I feel like sometimes people are interpreting it as ‘She sounds the same on all her songs.’”

For the record, Megan would push back on that characterization; she believes she switches up both her flow and style plenty. But she has started wondering whether her “thick-ass accent” makes those differences harder to hear, so this time around, she began stretching her voice in new directions. “It was a little bit out of my comfort zone to try my voice in a different way or over a different kind of beat,” she says. “I was a little shy this go-round, but everybody has been so supportive in hyping me up. I feel like the hotties are gonna appreciate this.”

If Act III is where Megan has gone “through all the feelings,” she doesn’t seem interested in making the result sound solemn. In a June preview of a new song, she rapped, “All that wifey shit is dead/Put that shit to bed.” For Megan, all that healing leaves even more room for hot-girl shit. “It’s always hot-girl shit,” she confirms, with a big, bright smile. She remains coy about the sound but not the attitude; any longtime listener knows that when Megan says it’s time for hot-girl shit, it means that good vibes are coming. “No matter what’s going on, I definitely always pick myself up,” she assures.

Megan’s learning how to move forward without pretending everything is behind her. Act III, it turns out, is being made from somewhere in the middle.

Stylist Dione Davis | Hairstylist Kellon Deryck | Makeup artist Priscilla Ono | Manicurist Jay | Set designer WayOut Studio

This piece originally appeared in Marie Claire's 2026 Legends issue.

The unspoken contract of being a Black woman on reality TV usually goes something like this: Be yourself but not too much. For a handful of Black women occupying space on the predominantly white shows of Bravo TV, the feeling of having to shrink is commonplace—some might even say it’s their job. While they may carry it with grace, seemingly meshing well with friend groups and doing so with a smile most of the time, those of us who understand the complexities of being Black women know there is always more happening beneath the surface.

For me, that awareness came early. I was 5 years old and one of only two Black girls in my kindergarten class when I first realized what it meant to be seen as different. And while at the time I couldn’t have begun to comprehend what that feeling of incongruousness would mean for the rest of my life, it was palpable.

To understand the experience of having that feeling play out for millions of viewers every week, I sat down with four of Bravo’s most prominent Black cast members on a late June afternoon in Brooklyn: Lake Rucker of Southern Hospitality, Jasmine Goode of The Valley, Venita Aspen of Southern Charm, and Mia Calabrese of Summer House. Together, we unpacked what it means to exist so publicly in a universe that rarely includes or uplifts Black women. For the first time ever, they said out loud what they’ve only ever said in private.

Marie Claire: Do you feel like you’ve been given the space to be messy, angry, vulnerable, all of it, on reality TV?

Mia Calabrese: I mean, we can do it, but we just know the backlash is going to be very different than our white counterparts.

Venita Aspen: At the end of the day, the backlash doesn’t feel worth it. You know, you sit with that for however long the show’s on. So say it’s like three months—every week for the next three months, someone’s going to tell you that you shouldn’t act like that. “You acted like this” or “You’re looking bad for the community” or “Of course the Black girl’s acting like this; of course the Black girl’s angry.”

Jasmine Goode: The other cast members, they’re allowed to act that way. They can act up, get loud, do this and that—everyone will still listen to them. But the moment I show some emotion, it’s looked at like, “Oh, you’re doing too much. You need to calm down.” That’s frustrating.

Lake Rucker: Growing up, especially growing up in the South, my parents always taught me that I have to work 10 times as hard as the white people around me because I went to PWIs [predominantly white institutions]. So it was always hard, having to navigate that. Not being able to fully express my emotions because you’re either deemed as aggressive or overly emotional, and sometimes you just want to be vulnerable and be yourself.

MC: How have you all been received by the Black community as Black women on these predominantly white shows?

JG: I’ve been getting a lot of “Get new friends, you don’t need to be on this show.” And it’s like, But this is literally my life. I’ve been in this friend group. These are my friends; I can’t leave my friends because you think I need to have only Black friends. So I’m getting some support, but then it’s these people always saying, “Why are you in this group? This is your fault, you did it to yourself.”

VA: Or like when you post a picture with them and they’re always like, “Oh my God, do you not have Black friends?”

MC: Lake, your mom’s advice about not involving non-Black people in Black people’s business went viral this season. Do you wish you’d listened sooner?

LR: Oh, 100 percent. I love my mom’s advice, that’s why I speak to her about it. She’s always giving me the best advice with counseling me, being there for me, helping me be the amazing woman that she is raising me to be. I feel like I made so many mistakes this past season, but I’m also growing and learning. I joined this business when I was 21 years old. I’m 23, and I’m allowed to make mistakes and learn from them. Going back to the Black community, responding back to those mistakes, it’s been a struggle because seeing the feedback and the backlash from this past season, it’s been kind of hurtful. But, you know, it’s only making me stronger and want to learn from those mistakes and come out on top.

MC: Do you feel pressure to defend your castmates when they say something that the Black community takes issue with?

VA: They make it very hard not to see it. And when it’s happening, like when the whole Emmy [Sharrett], Leva [Bonaparte], Brad [Carter] situation was happening, the amount of messages I received on Threads being like, “You should speak up, you should say this, you should say that.” And at the end of the day, do I have my thoughts? Yes. But I’m not going to put myself in a crossfire when I’m not the main one in it. Why do I have to do it? Why can’t Madison [LeCroy] speak up about it? Madison and Leva are also friends. Why can’t Austen [Kroll] speak up? Why can’t anyone else do it? Why does it have to be me?

LR: I had several conversations with Emmy, telling her that what she said was wrong. I made it very clear to her my feelings on it, and I made it clear to Brad. I made it clear to Leva as well. Leva is a very strong businesswoman, and she can hold her own. And when it comes to Emmy, it was just very disheartening to see how long it took her to realize what she had done was wrong. As someone who has viewed her as my closest friend on the cast, when your closest friends are Black, it’s kind of like, Well, how do you see me if you saw Brad this way?

MC: Mia, you were called aggressive at the Summer House reunion. What was that like?

MC: Yes, after the reunion, someone called me aggressive. I won’t say his name. But I was asking maybe uncomfortable questions, direct questions. But being direct, does it make someone aggressive? That makes me sure of myself. We cannot confuse those two. It’s okay to ask hard questions, because those questions need to be asked and answered.

JG: The fact that you were even called that is crazy to me, because I feel like other people on your cast have been reckless and no one’s ever calling them aggressive.

MC: Even when we’re looking at the reunion, I typically don’t raise my voice, and there’s not an aggressive bone in my body. I’m not aggressive. It was actually like one of the first times I’ve been called that, and, of course, it’s by a white man. I found that fascinating because I’m watching this and I’m like, Okay, well, let me watch this back. And I’m watching my white friends onstage, who to me were a lot more aggressive than I was, and those words never came out of his mouth about them.

MC: In which ways have you all censored yourself for the show?

VA: I kept myself kind of cookie-cutter, in a box. I had to be the perfect Black girl, if you will. But even Mia knows, I cut up. I think that this is the first year I’m allowing myself to fully be who I am and not care what my castmates have to say about it on the other end of it, when they see it back in a few months. I can’t worry about how they feel because it is true, I haven’t been fully myself. And now I’m just like, you either like it or not, take it or leave it.

JG: I’ve always been tiptoeing and being careful with what I say around the group. Sometimes I’m worried they’re going to perceive me this way if I say something, so it’s like, Okay, don’t act that way, Jasmine, because the world is going to look at you crazy. So it’s been a struggle. Hopefully one day, I’ll get there, where I don’t give a shit. I think I’m starting to get there slowly. Like, this season, I’m starting to have those tough conversations and letting people know, “Look, this is how I’m feeling.” But in the beginning, it was really hard to be my true self. I was always nervous that somebody was going to be judging me.

VA: They’ll judge us regardless.

MC: It’s also kind of like a push and pull constantly, being a Black woman. It’s like, how far can I really go without being called aggressive? It’s like, how far can I push this?

JG: And then you see other cast members doing something, and I’m like, I act that way too, right? Because they’re doing it. But I’m like, No, you can’t do it. It’s not the same for you.

MC: What has your experience of dating on TV been like as Black women— and, for Jasmine and Lake, queer women?

LR: You know, I’m Gen Z so it’s a lot more lax when it comes to sexuality, fluidity, and dating outside of your race. But I’ve always just dated who I vibe with.

JG: Me and Melissa, we were dating before the show even was a thing. So it’s like, yeah, this is my relationship. We live in L.A., thank God, in a state that’s accepting. So I think it’s been great that we can show representation.

VA: I think I’m in a place in my life where I truly don’t care about what people think, because who I fall in love with doesn’t have shit to do with you. When I’m dating somebody, that’s who I’m with. My mom never raised me to be like, “Oh, you can only take one type of man.”

MC: My relationship was not typical, right? We were in a long-distance relationship. In the beginning, it worked—until it didn’t. People were like, “You should do this.” And I hear everything you’re saying, but I care about how someone treats me. Are you kind to me? Are you respectful to me? Do you listen to me? It’s not the perfect relationship; whose relationship is perfect? But if the foundation is there, that’s what matters to me. I think that’s not always shown, Summer House is not a show about my romantic life. So that part was not shown. I was getting a lot of blowback about that, and while everyone’s entitled to their opinion, it doesn’t mean I have to listen to it.

MC: Do you think reality TV has a problem with not addressing racially charged moments when they happen?

MC: Yes, and I also think we don’t always know how to have those conversations with our white counterparts. Like, we can sit here right now and have this conversation for hours and hours and hours and hours. But if this was a mixed group, I don’t know. Would we be able to have the conversation so comfortably? And also, would they be receptive towards it? When we had our conversation, me, KJ, and Ciara, last summer, what I took from that was, Wow, they sat there and listened to us. Nobody was interrupting. Nobody was saying, “Well, it’s actually not like that.” Which, in my past when I’ve tried to have those conversations with white friends, that’s kind of where the conversation goes.

JG: And like you said, I think especially for me this season, the fact that they’re airing the tough conversations I’m having with my friends is, like, a big deal for me. I’m like, Thank you, because that’s what I want. I feel like a lot of my cast members love everything being out there and open. I think that’s really big. And you know, it’s hard.

MC: Would you say it’s worth it, being a Black woman on Bravo?

JG: I think we talked about that last night—about how, with all the struggles and the things that we deal with, the trolls and comments, it’s still worth it.

MC: It’s also representation. It is so important for little kids or young women or young men, whomever, to look at what we’re doing and say, “That person looks like me, that person has gone through similar life experiences that I’ve gone through.” And that, to me, makes it all worth it. I get a percentage of viewers that don’t like me, but the larger percentage that does, that sees me, that’s what matters.

MC: What have you learned about yourself through this journey?

MC: When I was given this opportunity, I said I wanted to be 100 percent myself, no matter what that looked like. My lesson is that I just have to continue to be me. And if people don’t like you, that’s okay, but at least you’re being true to yourself.

VA: The greatest lesson I’ve learned about myself is that even on my worst days, I’m still showing up better than my counterparts.

LR: I feel like I’m learning a lesson every single day; I feel like I’m growing every single day. I’m so young, and I have so much more life and lessons to live. But what I tell myself every day is, It’s okay.

JG: I’m so proud of all of us. I think being a Black woman on TV is hard. I’ve been on a couple shows. It’s not easy. So I’m just proud of all of us being proud of ourselves.

Stylist Cassy Meier | Goode's hairstylist Anari LaBoard | Goode's makeup artist Billie Gene | Rucker's hairstylist Nika Pearl-Edwards | Rucker's makeup artist Renee Garnes | Calabrese's hairstylist Ester Rojas | Calabrese's makeup artist Renee Sanganoo | Aspen's hairstylist Karen Miller | Aspen's makeup artist Brittany Whitfield

This piece originally appeared in Marie Claire's 2026 Legends issue.

If you ever wanted to know who is on your favorite singer's playlist, or what albums inspired the latest “it girl” the most, tune in for Marie Claire’s resident music franchise Listen Up. In this interview series, we ask musicians about their listening habits and the specific records that informed their taste—and inherently their journey as an artist.

When Carly Rae Jepsen debuted in the mainstream with the inescapable and polarizing “Call Me Maybe” in 2012, the world decided that she would be a one-hit wonder. Since then, she’s proven she’s anything but.

Although the song was successful across many metrics, the singer-songwriter from British Columbia, Canada, felt it didn’t do justice to her range and, for years, was left fighting against being a “singles artist.” But she took the challenge in stride, refusing to be boxed in by the industry. “There was always this idea, especially when I first came to L.A., you have to be one thing. I fight that idea,” says Jepsen, 40, from her sunlit home office in L.A.

“Especially as women, we’re so many things.” Three years after the success of “Call Me Maybe,” the musician proved as much by releasing E•MO•TION, a cult-beloved ’80s-inspired fantasia, which she created with a coterie of Grammy winners and indie favorites including Shellback, Devonté Hynes, and Ariel Rechtshaid. The LP gave her a new level of critical acclaim and a devout fan base that has followed her as she’s continued to experiment with genres, from 2019’s electro-pop playground Dedicated to 2022’s folk-tinged The Loneliest Time.

By defying another of pop’s litmus tests—that female artists have an expiration date—she has made her most authentic album to date, Day and Night. “I really was allowing myself to ask, ‘What’s my contribution to this genre of music?’ which I don’t think, on any album before this one, I ever nailed,” Jepsen says. But on this 24-track double album, she did so by embracing every part of herself. “I call myself a bit of a late bloomer in general. It took me a second to stand in my own confidence of being unapologetically myself.”

Day and Night feels like a snapshot of what it might’ve been like to turn the radio dial in the early ’70s, when four-on-the-floor music gleamed and songs on the folk station experimented with disco. The album, she says, was made possible by the “incredible, mind-altering, life-altering change” she’s experienced in the past four years—during which she got engaged to, married, and welcomed her first child with music producer Cole M.G.N.

While the pop star’s next few months are largely focused on taking Day and Night out on the road (with her newborn son in tow), she’s also in the throes of working on one of her greatest passion projects: scoring the Broadway musical adaptation of 10 Things I Hate About You. “It has been the most gratifying, exciting new flavor of creativity that I've ever been a part of,” she says of the stage show opening in August 2027. (She’s partnering with Ethan Gruska on the music while Lena Dunham and Jessica Huang co-write the book.)

Jepsen says she and the Girls alum had been eager to work together in some capacity for years before theater producer Mike Bosner brought them together for the project. “If we’ve done our job right, it’s going to be funny,” she says of the musical to be directed by Christopher Wheeldon; she points to the Tony-winning Oh, Mary! as a comparison. “I go to work, and I leave in stitches from what their brains have come up with and how dark and twisty and silly we all get together.”

While Jepsen is known for embracing indulgence, it’s safe to say she’s doing so now more than ever—and flourishing.

In a candid May interview, Jepsen talks about the current stage of her life as well as the classics she grew up on, her little-known love for jazz, and what music she’s already sharing with her son.

James Taylor. I have a profound memory of one of the first times that I was left alone at the house; I had the record player, and I put on James Taylor, loud, and went up on the roof. He’s also the first artist I saw live, so that is going to be profound no matter what. I thought, Oh, my God. What could be a better career than this? How do I make that happen?

In terms of pop artists: Sinéad O’Connor. Holy shit, I thought, this is a once-in-a-lifetime voice.

It was by the Spice Girls. My girlfriends and I had our Lip Smackers and nail polish, and we would all trade [being the Spice Girls]—we all wanted to be Baby because she had the lollipop—and we would make up dances. It was a rite of passage.

I’m having a beautiful relationship with my record player again. In the morning, with my baby, I put on a different record for the week. Right now, I’m really blown away by Earth, Wind & Fire’s Greatest Hits. To me, it’s like watching a really good figure skater, where you’re like, “You’re making this look so easy, but I know it’s really hard.” Funk music—being so danceable and also so intelligent but so effortless feeling—I really am bowing down to how much I’m hearing that’s going on and how well it’s done.

A little-known fact about me is that I also have this deep love of jazz, which actually comes out in moments on this album, more so than any other before. I think the ’40s could also be really interesting because a lot of what I’m listening to at home is Billie Holiday. There’s something about hearing how those jazz songs are actually incredible pop songs too. To me, that is really, really wild.

More and more, what I’m loving is knowing two people who haven’t met and ought to meet. It’s almost like, “What’s your favorite color?” and I’m like, “Well, I like color combinations, actually.” I really have been obsessed with this band Say She She—I’ve never met them—but working with them and bringing them to [my frequent producer] Patrik Berger would be an incredible combination. That’s one of my dreams.

This Tegan and Sara T-shirt I bought when I first saw them, before they had broken into the U.S. [market.] It was luck. I was at a festival in Canada somewhere. I was an immediate fan. I went to the [merch tent], and I was like, “Who was that? I’m buying something.” It was a small enough festival that you felt like your contribution of $20 for a T-shirt might help them get to the next festival. I was in a similar place at the time, where I was like, “I need all the help I can get.” So I bought their shirt, and I still have it and cherish it deeply.

Then, fast-forward, they were on my dream list of people to collaborate with, and we got to work together. I waited until session number three, when I was like, “So, not to creep you out, I’m a huge fan.”

It would be all the people I have yet to see. Van Morrison—he's on my bucket list. I would love to see Say She She. I think Doja Cat is one of the most incredible performers of our generation. I really love Feist. I would also bring all my friends. I would bring Bleachers;. I would have Dev Hynes there, absolutely.

I don’t think there’s a better pop song than “Nothing Compares 2 U” by Prince [performed by Sinéad O’Connor]. It’s got everything, all the yearning in the world.

Laura Mvula’s “Show Me Love” was something I was really jealous of in a good way. It’s one of those songs—almost like a good Billie Holiday song—where you’re happy you’ve experienced heartbreak so you can relate to how good the song is.

Lykke Li. She does sad so beautifully. The lyrics [of “hard rain”]: “If you like the feeling of the hard rain falling / I have a sea full, I can give you an ocean.” When [the album so sad so sexy] came out, I remember being like, “Oh, good. I’m set for all my sad feelings this year. I have my playlist.”

The last time I went out was to the Lily Allen concert, and I was listening to her album [West End Girl] to get ready. You feel sassy, you feel vindicated. I don’t know a woman who can’t applaud that she said it for all of us, to that one ex we all know needed to hear it. That was such a satisfying art piece of an album.

That is too much pressure for me. I'd be a terrible DJ because I couldn't stay focused. I'd start somewhere, and then pretty soon we'd be listening to Jesus Christ Superstar. But if somebody hands it to me, I’ve been listening to The Temptations with the baby, and we’re having a great time, so that could be a nice party starter.

[They’re] from “Habits of Creatures”: “It’s nice the way you look at me / Daffodils grow on my street and awful free / I think you can be the one to plant my lemon tree.” It means, you’re the one I want to do this domesticated business with and be blissful, and we’ll slow things down. It feels like a romantic idea, like, when you know, you plant the lemon tree with a person.

I’m a new mom. My baby is fresh. So “All Night Long (All Night)" [by Lionel Richie].”

This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.

This piece originally appeared in Marie Claire's 2026 Legends issue.