Adele has always been a major voice for women, especially during #MeToo and Time’s Up.
She does it in her music, which has always been a celebration of strong, independent women. She does it in her style, too — like her white pantsuit in her interview with Oprah Winfrey.
“I get asked all the time, I do like pantsuits,” Adele says, sitting down with Winfrey for an interview to be aired on Oprah’s “SuperSoul Sunday” on Sept. 30. “But I also like fashion, so I try to do something a bit mix of the two.”
“Well, a touch of the both,” Winfrey replied, to much applause.
Winfrey and Adele spent a great deal of time reflecting on music. Winfrey discussed how her mother’s artlessness became a valuable source of inspiration for Oprah — until she learned more about her.
When Oprah puts her hand on Adele’s shoulder, she makes the connection: Oprah knew Oprah through her mother.
When Winfrey looked at her mother’s journals, they found that “she was a keen observer of her own life.” Winfrey said her mother looked up to women like Helen Keller, Dorothy Day and their fight for civil rights.
Winfrey said she was drawn to who Oprah was as a woman, as a mother, and as a reporter.
“All I was interested in was trying to understand you, being around you, hearing you,” Winfrey said. “You’re seeing yourself in the story of Oprah.”
Adele admitted that she was “very overwhelmed” to be in Winfrey’s presence, and she went as far as saying it was “the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me in my entire life.”
“I don’t know, I think it’s just the fact that you’re Oprah,” she said. “Like, here you are with all these people who are absolutely important to you and you’re coming to meet us, the people who made you. You know?”
Adele and Winfrey also discussed acting, and Adele explained how she started acting because of her dad, saying that he’d wanted to “maybe get into entertainment.”
“I think that he just really, genuinely couldn’t quite quite come to terms with it,” she said, to a lot of laughs. “Like it would have been a really difficult thing to explain to him, though, because I mean he was just the opposite way.”
She added: “You know, he’s a very hands-on parent, and kind of supportive — but he’s not … but I know what I’m talking about.”
Their conversation also touched on being famous. She said she was often “surprised” when people would walk up to her and say, “Oh, I want to take a photo with you!”
Winfrey then said: “Would you want your children to be famous?”
“Um, I think — I mean, let’s just say that I’m prepared to just see it all,” Adele replied. “But I think there will be a million parts of that journey that will be exactly the same as everyone else’s.”
“In our case, we’re a light — that’s the only difference,” Winfrey said.
Watch part one of Adele’s interview on Oprah’s “SuperSoul Sunday” on Sept. 30, or the entire thing on Sept. 30.