Jessica Simpson
Keepin' it Real
Pop's purest princess on the evils of gossip, her recent health scares and her weirdest fan *ever*!
"I Wanna Love You Forever" could almost be the theme song of Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey's high-profile relationship.
But along with being one half of teen pop's #1 love match, Jessica is working nonstop to continue promoting her debut CD, finishing her new album (which will be out in time for Christmas!) and touring.
We were fortunate to grab a few of her minutes in Walt Disney World, where Jessica was doing a two-night stand as the star attraction of "Grad Night." It was a great gig, but it meant performing till 1:00 AM each night despite a cold.
Jessica's manager-dad told us he'd urged her to lip-synch since everyone does it when they're sick and physically unable to hit the notes. But Jessica insists she will *never* lip-synch.
"I'd rather miss a note than resort to lip-synching. I think it's a rip-off."
We've covered Jessica from the very beginning, and she remembers! "Hey! Popstar! was the very first magazine that ever put me in," she gushed as we began our interview. In fact, we have more JS in this issue than ever, including several pinups scattered here and there.
As usual, she graced us with her open and honest answers and that Texan charm.
Check out PART II of this fascinating Simpsonfest in Popstar! (NOV 00)!
Popstar!: Why do you think fans are so into you and Nick being together, and yet are so threatened when others in the industry date?
Jessica: Because we were honest from the beginning. There are definately people who are together and have lied about it. People know they're together and it's just ridiculous.
We were together before I even came out. We were nervous about it. But we couldn't go to the movies together, and hold each other's hands and have fans see us and the next day say that we weren't together in an interview.
That is just lying to the public and we didn't think that was right at all.
You seem like a fairy-tale princess. Have you ever had huge obstacles to overcome?
Yeah, eighth grade was really the worst year of my life. My best friend turned her back on me and started spreading all these really, bad, bad, disgusting rumors about me. It's a really disgusting rumore, I don't even want to tell you what it is-it's a sexual rumor.
As a young girl, not even knowing what it mean-I never ever heard of it in eight grade [laughing]-I didn't go to school for three weeks. And I was the head cheerleader. [Laughs] We'd perform at games and I'd be cheering and our cheerleaders would go over to other cheerleaders and tell them this stupid thing was not true at all, and they'd tell everybody in the stands and they'd start yelling at me.
We had to get counselors involved and it was a huge, huge deal. If I didn't have my family and my relationship with God, it's one of those things that you would have been like, "I don't want to be here anymore."
Once I pulled through it, I learned how to be a friend. I stopped gossiping because I knew how bad it could hurt you.
What do you do in your free time?
Sleep! [Laughs] No, I can't even sleep anymore. I feel like a grandma. I'm so used to not sleeping that I wake up at 7:00 AM and I'm like [getting all feisty], "All right, let's go!"
I like to go shopping if I can. Normally I go when school is not out. [Laughs] I go, like during the day. I love the Guess! store. If it's not something that my stylist is pulling for me, then I would never spend $500 on a shirt. I just couldn't do it. [Laughs]
I love the movies. I see every movie that's out.
Have you ever gone through a period as far as things you wore or your hair and you look at photos now and you just go, "What was I thinking?"
Not really. When I look at photos, I'm like, "For back then, that's really cute." My mom used to dress me and she still dresses me. She dressed me today. [Laughs] I can't put on an outfit if my mom doesn't pick it or say it's cute.
I've always worn my hair long until I was doing a photo shoot a year and a half ago for another magazine. I'm not going to say the name. [Laughs] They didn't ask me and they cut seven inches off my hair. They took a razor and just cut seven inches. I looked in the mirror and I just started weeping. They were going to trim it and give a new style to it, but I didn't know they were going to cut seven inches off my hair.
Columbia freaked and I had to wear hair extensions!!!
At what age were you first allowed to wear makeup?
I remember the very first time I put on makeup to go out. It was when I was going to my seventh grade dance. After that, I didn't wear it until ninth grade. Then I just wore powder and mascara and lip-gloss. And that's pretty much what I still wear. I do all my makeup for my shows and stuff.
If I wasn't singing, that's what I would do. I would love to be a makeup artist or a hair stylist.
Is your little sister still dancing with you?
Yeah, she was up there last night! She's a star all by herself. She's working on her music career right now. It looks like her and Beyonce of Destiny's Child's little sister are going to do a duo thing. They're putting together a demo and everything. My sister's got a great voice.
What's your favorite memory with you and your sister?
I think just Christmas morning. We's always sleep together-well, we still sleep together. I love to sleep with my sister. I don't know why...we have just always slept together! [Laughs] But definately on Christmas Eve, we could never go to sleep. We were all excited to see what Santa brought us.
Have you had any weird fan experiences?
There was this one fan in Canada-he's 35, maybe 40-and he wrote me a 50 page letter and he sent me all these pictures of himself. God, please let him stay in Canada! [laughs]
I've had weird things happen like somehow people will know what airport you're at, what gate your at, and how the heck did they find that out? Because I go under an alias, I don't go under Jessica Simpson. We learned our lesson.
Then I have people up by my room sometimes, so I've changed my alias name a couple of times.
Do you have a fitness routine?
Well, I didn't until I was in the hospital for five days. But now I do. My cousin is out on the road with me and he's a nutritionist. Everything is in my family. My mom's my stylist, my dad's my manager, my sister's my dancer, my cousin does all my fitness and nutrition.
He puts me on a thing that is just eating healthy. So I eat a lot of grilled chicken and vegetables. My show in itself is a workout. If I work out, I'll do lunges, sit-ups and push-ups. I'm not going to run for two hours on a treadmill because I can't even run for two minutes on the treadmill. [Laughs]
You've had some hospital stays this past year, right? What's the scoop?
Well, I went to the hospital three times last year. First, I had a cyst the size of a volleyball on my fallopian tube. They had to remove that. My stomach was literally sticking out. I thought I was just getting so fat. It was the worst thing that I've ever gone through. I had to go to the hospital two times for that on the road. The first time, the doctors just said I had a huge bladder. I'm in the hospital having all these tests and everything and they said I had a big bladder. Then I was in Boston about to do a huge show and I just collapsed. So they removed it then.
Then, right before Christmas on the Ricky Martin tour, the last couple shows, I just couldn't do them. I was getting really, really sick. What happend ws that I had an upper respiratory infection and I had a bladder infection, and I was taking stetoid packs because I couldn't sing. I don't advise steroid packs, they're the worst thing you could do. They bascially ate up all my good bacteria.
And I had a major kidney infection. I was one hour away from loosing my kidney. It was really, really scary. I was in the hospital for five days straight being pumped with all of these antibotics. We were really, really scared. They thought it was going to fail.
But-thank God-though a lot of prayer and a lot of rest, I was okay.
Back to articles page
