Adele has opened up in a no-holds-barred interview with Oprah Winfrey where she spoke about her weight loss, coming to terms with the collapse of her marriage and eventual divorce, co-parenting with ex-husband Simon Konecki and crediting him for saving her, juggling motherhood and her musical career and mending fences with her father before he passed away. The interview was part of CBS’ special Adele One Night Only that aired on Sunday night.
The interview also featured a performance by the singer from an exclusive concert that was pre-recorded and was a prelude to Adele’s fourth studio album 30 that will release on November 19. The singer opened up about her tremendous weight loss and the related reactions from people. She said that she started working out to control her anxiety due to the collapse of her marriage and said, “I'm not shocked or even fazed by (people's reactions to her body transformation) because my body has been objectified my entire career. I was body-positive then and I'm body-positive now. It's not my job to validate how people feel about their bodies.”
Get ready for a spectacular evening. The voice. The songs. The stories. The truth. @Adele One Night Only airs tomorrow November 14 at 8 pm PT/8:30 EST on @CBS. pic.twitter.com/Xihb5OgQd2
— Oprah Winfrey (@Oprah) November 13, 2021
Adele also spoke about her disappointment on the split from ex-husband Simon Konecki and spoke about their separation publicly for the first time to Oprah. She said, “I've been obsessed with a nuclear family my whole life because I never came from one. From a very young age I promised myself that when I had kids that we'd stay together and we would be that united family and I tried for a really, really long time. I was so disappointed for my son. I was so disappointed for myself.” She recalled how she realized the end of her marriage when she quizzed herself on a magazine question that was, “What's something that no one would ever know about you?" She revealed, “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.' ... 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 was excited to meet @adele for the first time ever and I’m glad she is as real & down to earth as we believe her to be. Before any interview, I ask my guest for their intention for our conversation. I went to see Adele as she was getting ready in my guesthouse to ask her the… pic.twitter.com/PlMEkK4rhI
— Oprah Winfrey (@Oprah) November 14, 2021
However, she credited Konecki for saving her life and spoke about co-parenting their son Angelo. The singer said she still loves him but is “not in love with him”. She credited him from preventing her from going down a path of self-destruction and said, “I could have easily have gone down some dodgy paths ... and sort of self-destructed from sort of being so overwhelmed by all of it, and he came in, and he was stable, the most stable person I have ever had in my life up until that point. I feel like him and Angelo were angels sent to me, that's how I feel.” The couple still live opposite each other in Los Angeles and continue to co-parent their nine-year-old son Angelo.
.@adele had us at hello! @lizzo what concert are we going to next?! #AdeleOneNightOnly pic.twitter.com/uLBWHGclkw
— Oprah Winfrey (@Oprah) November 15, 2021
Speaking about writing her fourth album 30 in real time, Adele said, “Everything was happening in real time. I was writing my album, you know, while I was going through everything.” She also said that the album is dedicated to her son and said that she struggled to tell Angelo about not being in love with his father. During the interview she said, “There were so many answers I couldn't give him because there aren't any. The whole album is not about him, it's about me and I just wanted for him to hear me talking madly deeply about who I am and how I feel. I don't know if I'll ever be able to have that conversation with him in real life, so therefore he can go and listen to it." On the other hand, she also said that she would like to grow her family but it wouldn’t be the end of the world for her if she didn’t have more children and said, “I'm definitely open to it. I would like more children. It wouldn't be the end of the world if I don't have them, cause I have Angelo."
— Adele (@Adele) November 15, 2021
The interview also revealed that Adele and her father patched their differences in his last days and he finally heard her music and loved it. Talking about her estranged father Mark Evans, who left home in her childhood, Adele told Oprah, “We forgave each other. ... We found our peace together, and then I played the album to him on Zoom. His favorites were all of my favorites, which I thought was amazing." She described spending time with her father before his death as, “very, very healing," adding that "when he died, it was literally was like the wound closed up."
The star also spoke about her blooming romance with Rich Paul and said, “He's just hilarious. Oh, he's so funny, he's hilarious, yeah. And very smart. You know, he's very, very smart. It's quite incredible watching him do what he does. And just the easiness of it." She credited her romance with Paul as the first time she’s “loved myself” as well as being the first time she has "been open to loving and being loved by someone else."
It was also the first time my son saw me perform and I’ve never been so nervous in my life!! I hope you like it, tune in tonight at 8:30pmET / 8pm PT on CBS x
— Adele (@Adele) November 14, 2021
She also spoke about the exclusive concert recorded at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles where her son saw her perform for the first time and said that she was extremely nervous. Adele also revealed that Angelo thinks Taylor Swift is the biggest star as he had seen her Reputation stadium tour in 2018, when he was just 6-years-old.
(Source: Adele One Night Only/CBS/Twitter)